L'Nass Shango | + Follow Poet |
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Labor Day Observations

Tell me again
This wealth you gasp and clamour for
This strategy you wield
From the invincible substratum
Where the hunt pursues the frenzied heart
And the congestive traffic of arteriosclerosis 
For what do you deal
The long evenings swinging on the green and
The soul's sanity again?

I have checked for definitions
One say it is production from the land
And I hear in it engines
Ripping out the earth's red heart
Another say it is a product of labour
And I imagine a weary mother
And the pains of dystocia 
Besides you own no land
Where concrete does not mushroom
Into skyscrapers
And dirt abominable in the atmosphere
And I guess labor is not physical.

Some say it is a measure of value
Of what you own
Was that the members of my body
For I pay tax for
Is a mere rental, not mine.
Easement only entitles me
To brown paper bags blowing in the gust
And the oily wrap of hamburger papers
I never bought them
They just fell where I bare the cost without the benefits.
Men who own revenue are rich

You say it is policy
That the labourers clock in at eight
I say its power
That make men to make wealth
They give away for the pittance of wage
All morning I have watched them
As they check their assets of grief
Before getting to security at the gate
Grief is suspicious you know
Only terrorists have grievances.
We bring our last resolve to work
The heart like a derrick
Grappling with the weight in the sky.

It is all your wealth
His mother phlegmatic coughing
And asbestos dust
Thickening on the lip of the child 
I have no love for the Midas disease
For still its free
The open air
The sun cracking nuts in a tree
And the wild shout of cataract
And below me the immense gorge
Where the water trickles
Under the dam
Irrevocably to the sea.

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