Nike pays their workers
About sixteen dollars a week for
Them to work 80 hours
Making a pricey brand-name sneaker
(That’s twenty cents an hour
For those with a math obsession)
But hey! They’re paying Kaepernick
To speak out against oppression.
Tag Archives: Money
Another Case For Anarchy
The wealthy and the powerful
In conflict did divide
To play a game of endless war
In which the commons died
For when egos battle
And at the heart of every war:
The rich, you’ll find, will seldom mind
The dying of the poor.
Filed under Poems
Monopoly
You all begin by passing “go,”
But who will win we don’t yet know.
You buy land with childish glee
Wherever two dice should decree.
This play continues for a while
And all the players wear a smile
Until the property is bought.
Then the game changes a lot.
Instead of paying endless rent
It pays to be of criminal bent
And spend a couple turns in jail
Before you pay a $50 bail.
But at this point the odds are high
That you know who is the guy
Who’ll win the game when all is done.
At this point it’s no longer fun.
But do you stop when joy is gone?
No! No! No! You carry on!
When bankrupt are the car and shoe,
The thimble’s dead and so are you
So ends the game, and that is when
The winner says “Let’s play again!”
Then you and the losers, at your behest
Punch the winner in his community chest.
Through the pain he says “Tsk, tsk.
“Then how about a game of Risk?”
Filed under Poems
The Analogy Is Actually Kinda Perfect
America is like Halo:
It started out with violence
And an independent spirit
Fighting an immortal empire
Who knew well that we’d fear it.
Then the beloved sequel came
And we gave up the slaves we stole,
Fought a battle on both sides
To forge our true united soul.
Then came history’s “Halo 3”
Which was forgettable all in all,
Clearly not its glorious peak
But it hadn’t hit the wall.
When the Vietnam years came
Thus started Halo 4
Where we spat on our own soldiers
Drafted into pointless war.
Now here we are in Halo 5
Where profit is the king,
Equality is an afterthought
And everything’s covered in bling.
We who love the franchise past,
The Halo 1’s and 2’s
Who love America in spirit
Not America in the news
Look hopefully at the future
While feeling kind of vexed
Wondering what the powers that be
Will inevitably screw up next.
Filed under Poems
The Flavor Of “Winning”
For a moment I sat there
With blood on my hands
Smearing life on my white-bread toast
In a room all alone
With inanimate friends
In a halfway house built for a ghost.
My Ferrari was mired
In a 90-hour week
When I needed just 12 to survive
But I’d long since stopped living
For the privilege of being
Among the elite few who can thrive.
The child in the basement
Was calling for daddy
‘Til its fat little throat had gone raw
And yet I was too busy
Helping others to join me
To notice my life had a flaw.
But if I’d payed attention,
Tasted a tomato
Or felt a moth land in my hair,
Just walked outside barefoot
Or put salt in my coffee
I’d realize somehow I still care.
I care about family.
I care about freedom.
I don’t need this bottle and pill.
And maybe that baby
Will say “taste the tomato”
And if I haven’t yet died then I will.
Filed under Poems
The Vanishing Glass
They can trap us in their zoo
Behind their walls of glass
And teach us social boundaries
That we’re not allowed to pass,
Feed us just enough bad news
To keep our anger stoked
So we don’t see the sedatives
With which we’re being poked.
We the livestock draw the crowds
Of wealthy and elected
Whose power cries more loudly
Than the souls they have neglected.
They say they’ll cure our poverty
If they can have their way
Then toast with million dollar wine
And fly their jets away.
We watch the birds who fly outside
This zoo we somehow cherish.
We think that if we join them
We would starve or freeze or perish,
Yet the glass is not unbreakable
In our patron’s steel zoo.
Some of us still crave the sky
And so I ask: Do you?
Pokemon: When A Binder Becomes A Portfolio
He wanted to be the very best
Like no one ever was.
He played the games and bought the cards.
His reasoning? “Just ’cause.”
Now he travels across the land
Rich and fancy free
Because he sold old merchandise
To folks like you and me.
It took some courage along the way
To claim his rightful place;
His base set boosters unopened still
By some amazing grace
Kept up in value as time went on.
The prices didn’t fall
Because of middle class ’90s kids
Who had to catch ’em all.
And so for all the neopets
Forgotten in the cloud,
The baseball rookies who faded out,
The fads without a crowd
There rose among them a modern god,
Electric mouse and friends
That makes you money enough to buy
The very world we must defend.
That’s why I’m buying at Toys R Us
Instead of buying stock.
Who know what franchise will soon become
The next Pokémon or pet rock?
Filed under Poems
Monopoly Ends
It’s half an hour to midnight
As the car runs out of gas.
The hat succumbs to the weather.
The little dog treats me like a cat.
My will is like an iron
As I walk in metal shoes
Towards the hotel of my rivals
And I know I’m bound to lose.
No change, though hours are passing
At the boardwalk by the park.
A steamship carrying wheelbarrows
Passes silent in the dark.
And as I spend my last coin
At the railroad B&O
I look at my thimble overlord,
Roll doubles thrice and to jail I go.
Filed under Poems
Seriously, Look It Up People!
Nixon heard of the Laffer curve
And thought it was a joke.
Reagan heard of the Laffer curve
And said “that’s why we’re broke!”
Obama heard of the Laffer curve
And asked “what did you smoke?”
Trump heard of the Laffer curve
And said “this is bigly woke!”
Most of you heard of the Laffer curve
For the first time just now,
You don’t know what it is
Or how it affects your chow.
So please look up the Laffer curve
So as to be better informed
And we can get to fixing
All the folks who’ve been social-normed.
Filed under Poems
The Daily Travesty 