General Strike
What if we closed shop early?
Like, the whole human race.
Stopped going to work, and shipping the goods,
stopped letting the rats eat our face.
If everyone did it at once it’d be easy
if everyone just got a clue
that 99 percent of all that we do
just makes some more money
for someone other than you.
Just leave down the highway,
grow happy plants,
Find a new way to survive in this Hell
cause at least that beats going back.
It beats breaking your body
on some rich man’s chores
it beats walking your feet
until they’re entirely sores
because if that’s what it takes to live to retirement
then we might as well die now, on our own
and content.
You see there’s a secret almost everyone knows,
they’re killing the earth so they can pick at its bones,
and you won’t get ahead
when the waters start rising.
Hard to retire with the rich realizing
they need to work us to death
to get what they want,
and if you’re poor with a bad job
then it’s only your fault.
It’s not that we’re indebted since the instant we’re born
and that most of all the jobs around don’t pay enough to live
unless you go to school for one of four things
then you’re doomed to poverty until the ending.
So live with three roommates for the rest of your life
don’t go to the hospital if you want to survive
financially ruined but forced to slog on
by like one hundred assholes who could help us all
and will instead decide to eat us alive
it’s cheaper and faster
than paying fair wage
yet somehow takes up all your time.
In the land of for profit prophets
then I am only a hack.
jotting my lonely prophecy in a workplace notepad.
Wishing there was more.
Wishing I could do
anything at all but count on you
to realize, breathe with my lungs,
see what our rulers have planned for our tongues.
They’ll be sliced into pieces and boiled for fat
hung fashionably from the Cloud with a hat
but never used to speak,
or build a new thought,
only join in the dogpile,
eager for clout.
How are you helping? What do you see?
Our whole economy runs on monotony
and stupid petty tyrants, seething all day at work,
hoping they’ll finally be rich
if they make someone else’s life worse.
