Can't Make Rent

I think I am going to perform this piece on the 18th at a spoken word venue. It's best to be read aloud.

I woke up white-knuckling the white sheets with white fear chattering my white teeth. I breathed, I calmed, I hit the alarm. I showered, I pressed, teeth brushed, I dressed. But that poor automaton in me had died, overnight suicide, so that white fire in my black mind kept me spinning ...

Winning the lottery - that's the only way I could pay all my bills and the lot of me doesn't have the extra buck to spend on cheap thrills; hopes of luck run dry when all my cash goes to gasoline and rent; I have visions of my father working long hours with back bent - without sense, we slave, we burn, we toil, we churn, we spend, we spree, we save, we bleed - DAMN this recession and this economy! What's to show for what is owed? We're told pay your taxes, pay the piper, well I've caught a debt sentence and it's a lifer.

Imagine no welfare, imagine no programs, imagine a place where top jobs go to the best man; Imagine no WIC, imagine no food stamps, imagine a hand up where we hand out with both hands. We're told things will get better, things take time, full collapse of the dollar, full collapse of our minds. We hear world-wide recession, an uprising in crime. I say take back your life, stop waiting in line. Stop the overspending, fire the CEOs, kick out the pimps and rehab the hoes; bailout the citizens, forget the bureaucracy, work for the people and end this Plutocracy!