We now live in the land of the discarded
We see them with their cardboard signs
When they are not shivering in their tents
But mostly they live out of site in discarded places
Under bridges
And abandoned factories which once offered gainful employment
before automation greased the wheels of greater profits and
Drove the rest overseas.
We know why the American dream passed them by
chewed them up and spit them out:
The rich became our big box, high tech, blue-blooded royalty
With all of their extreme wealth and the power it could buy, scraped off the backs of the innocent
Who wanted to work
Who wanted to afford a roof over their heads
Who didn’t want to abandon their dreams
into the bottom of a bottle
But the whiskey knew the game was rigged
And offered the only escape hatch
They could afford.
Minimum wage is always the debate
By those who spend more than that on their dog sitters and frothy lattes.
Maximum wage is never on the table
Only how much of a feeble handout to give those who lost it all at the pandemic’s beckoning.
That we even consider giant permission slips to bring in more desperate millions to our shores
So the newly enriched can reach into their pockets
And complain that providing health care costs too much
Is a fool’s game from the scrap heap of time
We have little to offer the desperate, and what we do have comes with a heavy dose of racism
To keep the machinery of greed churning.
So much needs to be fixed in the land of the free and the home of the brave,
The promised land is now the broken land
And we must embrace our new reality
With a difficult hug
For when millions are already scouring food banks
You don’t dangle a carrot in front of more.