Modern Manifesto (Walled off Streets but Occupied by who?)

I will fight for my button pushing
resume typing book searching digits
until the rusted metal gates shut and
the Wi-Fi fades into the cracked concrete
by the bus stop that takes me to the subway
on my way home.


I will fight against the narrow-minded power
hungry pretend subway riding CEO slurping
billionaire mayors and governors who want
to give a free pass to the rich while extracting
the stitches out of the state: civil service workers,
firemen, policemen, teachers, librarians, nurses,
who hold our bodies together, our homes, our
minds with masking tape, construction paper,
staples, presence and a hose on a ladder.


I will fight, I will sit-in, stand-in, sleep-in on the
Capital stairways, petition until slime and grime
and crimes are rectified? And the crust is removed
from your eyes and the rich have one less summer
home to return to, one less yacht, one less crystal
chandelier or Camaro so the state can pay its bills
and I can continue to live my lower middle class
economic dreams and not be so scared that I will
let my parts up/off breaking at the seams…


I will fight because the termites are multiplying
and the dragons are spewing fire onto our rapidly
disintegrating paychecks and wrecking our non-
existent saving abilities further. I ask your mr.
volition, mr. politician what about my crashing
ceiling?, my debt ceiling, the parasites collecting
my sanity in a locked box of broken legal tender
and throwing away the key?


And I will fight because I am more than just vexed
by hexes I don’t believe at moment like these,
but I do believe in a potluck of bad luck, of tyrants
and schmucks mangling my entirely shriveled futures
forcing me into a darkness, a creature afraid of light,
and moving onward….

by Micah Zevin 2011