income inequality poems Archives

A New Depression Photo for Walker Evans | Jeff Burt

In abandoned factories gather abandoned people
who no longer do anything with abandon.

The massive conveyor system of steady employment
has broken, the machinery of work has ground

to a halt, the rope unravels that leads to hope.
Wealth begets wealth. Like hand-me-downs, only poverty

gets redistributed among the poor.
See? A rich person is unlike any other, distinguishable,

but a poor person is like all others, extinguishable.
The large man in the photo crouching

in the dimly lit corner, he could be a couch-surfing teen,
an orphan, or turned another way, a single mom.

Blue | Anna Kander

August 22, 2023 / Best Poetry / corporate greed poems, income inequality poems, lack of empathy poems, poems about social justice, social justice poems / Leave a Comment

Ladies and gentlemen, place your bets!

Blue-chip companies take their name from the color of the highest-valued chips at poker tables on October 28, 1929.

(we’re reliable, all-American, safe)

Then comes October 29, 1929: the day the stock markets crash.

Then comes October 30, 2009: me, new to a minimum-wage custodial crew, learning that the most important thing, when you clean the headquarters of a multibillion-dollar corporation, is the executive washroom.

The questions are not: Are floors swept? Are counters and toilets clean?

The real questions are: Is the trash empty, even if there were only three paper towels in the bin?

(they don’t want to see trash)

Did you wipe away any fingerprints left when you opened the shiny chrome stall doors?

(they want you to be invisible)

And, is the water in the toilet bowl a reassuring, disinfectant-blue?

No? We’ve no time. They don’t pay us enough to stay any longer. Night janitors got to hustle to the next job.

Just spritz some blue in there, let’s go.

(they don’t want to see)

(they’ll never know)

More at http://annakander.com.

Mac | Roy Pullam

August 21, 2023 / Best Poetry / income inequality poems, poems about social justice, poverty poems, rigged system poems, social justice poems / Leave a Comment

His orange Studebaker
Pulled up
To our house
Mac, my father’s friend
Struggled to get out
Gripping the steering wheel
Pulling his thin body
To the running board
His body twisted right
Broken beyond repair
In a mining accident
His left side
Ratcheted forward
His steps labored
He took the hose
From the coil
On the ground
Placing it
In the fifty-gallon barrel
One of six
In the bed
Of the truck
His well
Without a bottom
Blown out
By the explosions
In the nearby strip mines
I stood by Mac
Holding the grass sack
Full of Purex
Bleach bottles
Jugs I had gathered
At the dump
Jugs he would pay
A nickel for
Jugs he would fill
With the moonshine
He made on the hill
Behind his house
Mac always came
With gumdrops
With chocolate drops
With licorice
He bartered for the water
Mother was not happy
But Dad knew
Without the liquor sales
Mac would starve
They caught Mac
Destroyed his still
Locked him up
Five years
The judge lecturing Mac
For his sin
Of selling whiskey
In a dry county
And at the end
Of his work day
The judge
Had a highball
With friends
At the VFW
Rules are for poor people
Like Mac
The rich
Find their exceptions
The space
Between the laws

Functional Underclass | Tara Lynn Hawk

August 10, 2023 / Best Poetry / income inequality poems, minimum wage poems, permanent underclass poems, poems about social justice, social justice poems / Leave a Comment

These jobs
Where I have to dumb myself down
Greet everyone with a false smile
Where the employee manual
Tells me what to say
Each and every time
Create a false interest in how the customer’s day is going
Oh I am just so passionate
About you getting your food on time
and your soda refilled ASAP
So I can get a check
Every other week
That is never near enough
For me to move out of my car

More at https://www.taralynnhawk.com.

Constricting | Langley Shazor

July 3, 2023 / Best Poetry / income inequality poems, lack of opportunity poems, poems about social justice, rigged system poems, social justice poems / Leave a Comment

We willingly create ties
which cut off circulation
rubber band life styles
pent up energy
removing blood flow
constricting oxygen
We release the knots
only to bounce right back into confusion
So we lace up our boots
and march on
until we can’t feel our toes
Thinking this determination will yield positive results
But eventually, you won’t be able to walk
Now we sit
stuck behind desks
covering our anguish with tailored suits
Pressed shirts and sharp collars
with bow-ties we forfeit our last breath
Tethered to investments
with very low returns
After long days
we trade these collars in
Only to put on ones with leashes
handed over to those that drag us
pull us
and bark commands
Never allowing us to walk freely
for fear of losing control
So they keep us close
Choking our spirit
We “stay” like a good pet
Because, well, that is what you’re supposed to do
This life
This everyday life
We perpetuate freely
Until the last heartbeat
And there is no
Life
Left

Federal Reserve | Stan Morrison

June 28, 2023 / Best Poetry / greed poems, income inequality poems, read poetry online, where to find poetry / Leave a Comment

The reserve chairman has his reasons
guides us through the changing seasons
he works tirelessly for the good of us all
who have great wealth and run city hall
banks make up the federal reserve
foxes in hen houses totally absurd
the chairman loves money and banking
if you’re rich, it’s him you’d be thanking
his powers exceed those of an exchequer
for the rest of us, he’s a real home wrecker.

The Sleeping Woman | Sunil Sharma

June 21, 2023 / Best Poetry / good poems, income inequality poems, poverty poems, read poetry online / Leave a Comment

The Mumbai heat hits like a Tyson punch.
Sweat streaming down the densely-packed bodies of the
Middle-class commuters in the suburban local trains
Halting on long lines that shimmer in mid-May sun.
The A/C whines and whirs, unable to cool
The interiors of the sedan discomfiting the women
Talking Versace and Venice, loud tones, fiddling i-Phones
With dainty hands, wearing stones, waiting for lights to change.
Across the highway, under a lone Margo tree surviving in a huge
debris — dump,
sleeps the frail rag picker… marginal being.
A woman shrouded in unwashed clothes
unclaimed by the system.
Her present bed two fluttering newspapers,
a wrinkled face fanned by the hot wind,
drifting in happy realms, dead to sounds of a manic metro.

More at http://www.drsunilsharma.blogspot.in/.