Staring into Space
Sometimes I stare into space
For good reasons
My brother shot himself
On the side of a Kentucky highway
The last thing he said to me while
Pointing at my soviet shirt
“That’s the way it should be.”
My English teacher at my high school
In yougstown, Ohio
Who fights standardized testing
Told me, “That’s the way it should be.”
Sometimes I stare into space
Wondering why racism resembles
Religion in so many ways
Why the media puts average people
On reality TV shows and parades them around
Like monkeys
That thre are so many poor white people
In America, but no media outlet that shows it
NOT TV NOT MUSIC NOT EVEN LITERATURE
And for the African-Americans and Hispanics
Cosby and Lopez
Don’t show shit, white people don’t even live like that
And nobody would want to
We demand our lives to be reflected in media and art
We demand for you to stop feeding us delusions and shit
We cannot eat shit anymore
There are real concrete reasons for our suffering
It can be lessoned
HORROR! YES, KURTS. CORRECT
We work eight hours, punch time clocks, take fifteen minute lunch breaks
Beat our children, get into fights, swear, have dirty sex, hate ourselves,
Drink and take drugs, make mistakes, go bankrupt, punch walls,
Have holes in our shoes, wish we were dead, watch sports,
We are too tired to like our spouses and even our children,
we are depraved,
Decadent,
and the only time we give a fuck about anything
Is when we are getting paid
And we don’t even care then
What you call rugged individualism
We call insufferable alienation
We are starting to see the affects of our
Contradictory thinking
And we are starting to see where
The contradictions are coming from
All your lies have failed us
We have earned the fucking truth
Give it to us!
The more you make us hate other races
The other gender
Arabs
And Gays
The more we hate you
An older couple I know
The man at the factory working for twenty-five years
He did not reach forty-thousand until his last year
The woman holding a thirty-eight waiting
Confessed: That’s the way it should be.
At the Grand Canyon I met an older lady
From El Salvador
I asked her about Che
Tears ran down her cheeks while she spoke
She said, “Once there were good people,
Once there was good people.”
These people aren’t Maoist or Stalinists
They aren’t even Marxists
They just don’t understand
Why the majority of the world
Suffers and plays the monkey
So a few can ride in boats
And talk about the shit they own
Sometimes we stare into space
For good reasons
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