Privilege

A Poem

Photo by Mukul Kumar on Unsplash

haphazard
like luxury unchecked
in a luggage rack
lost
in some rainy town
far from where we roam
and where we cannot hope to be

oh,
there’s heartbreak here
a million miles a minute

oh,
there’s pain here
a thousand jolts a second

oh,
there’s no way out
for our ten dollars an hour

lies
always disguise themselves
in finer clothes,
untethered,
with no room for growth
or hope for absolution
or even common decency

oh,
we thought we had it all
in these shadowed caves

oh,
we thought we knew better
than someone else’s chump change

oh,
we thought we were the world
even as we reaped more than our share