Pay and pay

Pitch like crazy, don't expect to get paid.
Realize that money itself is the curse, 
the ghosts of electricity that Dylan 
moaned about, well they were the 
husks of a civilization that had 
planted a bomb between its legs,
set to a timer, unable to unharness itself 
to escape free.

You and I know better, you and I know better, 
and Patty Hearst, you sit there 
with your sisters, and all they can 
do is cry

confounded by the mere power of existence
while around foot soldiers dyin' and tryin'
and around you they blanket the soil 
with neurotoxins and even put that shit 
in the substance you eat.

Vomiting up plastic scavenged from the 
Great Pacific Garbage Patch, 
brought to Geiger-friendly 
Midway Atoll, transferred by regurgitation
con amor, into the little one's belly,
whose stomach is never empty and never full.

How does it feel, to be on your own, 
in the deep doodoo of our thankless bondage, 
watching forces not your own, 
do good, do bad, carve out 
wildernesses of uninhabitable hostility?

I am of the people, I am separated by a guard,
my fabric is your fabric, is not my fabric––
Come on, even Trump wants to breathe 
clean air, eat genetically unmodified steaks
that degrade in time, unlike McWhatever––
especially Trump. 

Only he thinks that others should pay and pay. 
The smell of a world that has burned.