Poem: Broke/How Am I Gonna Make Some Money?

[Obloquy]

(Note: this is intended to be a performance piece)

Spent-

This poem is called “how am I gonna make some money?”
Because being broke never made me more creative
Because being broke never made me channel some inner muse to come and do soft shoe for the paying customers while the great truths of the world became suddenly apparent
Because being broke never made me feel one iota closer to being happy the way all the rich people like to think when they watch movies that show how much all poor folk love each other against the odds
Because being broke keeps me up at nights and I need to get some goddamn sleep if I’m ever gonna get up in time for the job I don’t have and can’t keep.

It’s a new day outside.

Money is air
and they started bottling it so
Every word you let out of your mouth is a precious commodity that needs to be replaced so you better be real economic about that sh*t
You better network and politic and kiss all the ass you can while holding the two dollars and eight five cents you’ve got left in your lungs for safekeeping before someone robs your ass
Because broke people smell money.

You can’t feed an american dream without the air of freedom
The air in the register empty between your ribs
The air your parents give you till they decide to have to breathe on your own
You can’t feed children with pretty words and
you can’t impress the woman you love with your heart and intellect forever
You can’t
Keep
Anything

Not anything you value
Because it’s all been valued

You’re up for sale
I tell myself this
Caking it into my skin like whore’s makeup while I’m trying to psyche myself up
You know
I keep thinking I don’t have to sell my ass to make this life I want
while the price-tag flaps out from my coccyx and I keep trying to stuff it back in before someone sees it
and gives me an offer I wont refuse
because I want this so bad
and I think deep down
I might really love myself.

Because being broke is making it hard for me to be a good person.

I keep thinking of these stupid schemes when I space out
Ever since I got the last job I lost
I keep thinking that there’s some hustle some scam
In an economic system of scams with an unemployment rate built in
that a nice bright piece of sh*t like me
can go and do to fu*k someone else so I’m not the one taking it.
I watch the rich in brand name reality
Wearing the ease of being allowed to feel what they feel like cashmere conspicuous consumption
affording to feel guilty or righteous about passing the bum on the way to the train
Shrugging heavy shoulders as if weighed on by four hundred-plus years of white guilt
that wont quite roll off
You can afford the neurosis the psychologists
the cheap I don’t wanna think about it anger
cause the difference when I check the other box
on all those cute categorize my demographic surveys for college the government and the Gap
Is a real thing
Being broke and anomalous It’s not even being broke with a place
I don’t have a kind
I don’t have a prayer
and I don’t have a resume beyond a passing complexion
So

fu*k you and your feelings
Your fluff matrix of emotional justice where it’s okay to be treated like a ?????? but not called one
Your world where true heroes are something other than martyrs

fu*k you and your ability to feel real
To never have to take responsibility for your dreams.
To sleep soundly.

I don’t have any real money
No ma’am
It’s not my money
It’s borrowed air on a timer and my lungs ache from hyperventilating.
just enough on the trickle down to make it so I don’t starve while I worry myself anorexic about my nonexistent future with my degree calling me
begging me
to keep going in the marathon of self suppression.

I need money like you wouldn’t understand
I need money to feel like a man because the instructions that came with my gender read “provider” and everything you have is nothing until someone pays you for it.

I need money because I need to shut up the echoes of empty expectation I keep getting from
Every angle
every a**hole who’s already written me off
every a**hole who tells me with a wink and a smile it’ll come around
that I just need to keep going keep doing what people advise me
While their smirk tells me I’m doing just fine in amounting to the nothing they always thought I would

You’re nothing they tell me and the space in my wallet agrees
You’re nothing.
I feel like nothing
because money is air and I’m turning blue as the ink in my pen
The blood in my veins
No one wants my soul
No one will pay me for it
No one want what they can’t touch, fu*k, eat, wear or own
And my words are never that
And my soul is never that
And my words are never that
And my soul is never that
And my dream is never that
And I keep finding it harder and harder to say.

[somnambulistfuc]

Been reading Frost lately? Lol, hmmm...this doesn't seem like a poem (although I recognize the poetry of it). More like the starving artists manifesto; the approaching of the road less travelled and the problem that arises when your art and decision affect more than just yourself (personally I think we should all work as we don't need the money).
My problem with this piece is length, it's too long, we see your themes by the second paragraph/stanza. It just needs revision (mostly truncating the unneccessary) but as it stands, I like it and I agree.

[aplus]

I think this will make a pretty good performance piece, imo...decent drop

Could use some editing to streamline it....but that really depends on your spoken word style, maybe that would impact how you perform

[Obloquy]

edited slightly; intially it was written as it was thought and then posted as it was written.

[True Geniu$]

i understand where you are coming from. nice poem, but an even better performance piece...