A child asked me:
“Why do some people have so much
and some so little?”
I searched for words of comfort,
but found none.
I considered explanations,
greed, capitalism,
inherited wealth,
but they wouldn’t mean anything
to a child.
The best I could manage,
“It’s always been that way,”
brought a cry of despair:
“It’s not fair!”
In an anguished voice
at the shock of inequality,
in a woeful lament
that redress of grievances
would not be answered.
The creaky, old homeless woman,
ravaged by unmet demands
pulls her cart of broken dreams
as she trudges unkind streets
that do not welcome outcasts,
concrete without compassion
for relics of once normal lives.
I carry the delivery bag
and no one looks at me.
They ignore the delivery boy
and I can’t tell them
I’m a man, not a boy.
I hate my boss
who talks down to me,
because I’m an immigrant.
I hate the people who tip me
as much as those who don’t.
They are all the same,
despising me.
I try not to think of the old days
when I walked with Shining Path,
carried an AK-47...
No one laughed at me then.
Now I am a delivery boy
and must eat my pride.
In the ongoing war
between capital and labor
that surely started in the caves
if not sooner,
labor almost always lost,
except for a brief time
in 1940s America,
when unions exerted
temporary strength
that compelled concurrence
from begrudging bosses.
Then capital developed
international mobility
and no longer needed
American workers
who gave their best
on the assembly lines,
but cost too much
and made too many demands
to be treated with care.
So the lords of profit
closed their factories,
abandoned the workers
who made them rich
and built in third world countries
where labor was cheap
and not empowered.
The decline of the blue collar class
eroded the foundation of the nation
built on sweat and muscle,
now replaced by hi-tech
service jobs for the underclass,
unadaptable
to the Information Age.
So the Land of Promise,
the hope of the mass of humanity,
now resembles other lands
where the rich rule,
their servants prosper
while the rest of us
struggle to survive.
When a man lives on the street
he is a true citizen
of the disadvantaged world.
Nairobi, Calcutta, New York…
Did I say New York?
How can the richest city
ignore the abandoned
begging on street corners,
cardboard signs held low
the flags of disenfranchisement.
As the limousines drive by
the occupants do not notice
outcasts of despair.
Double Envelopment is an unpublished poetry collection in response to harsh conditions affecting many of our people, who only want a better future for their children.