I fear the checkout line, but I chose how to use my receipt

Location

Hamilton
13 Oak Dr
United States

 

 

I fear not for what I don’t have, but for what society lacks in value

Schools taught me how to read and think “right”, but that “right” was wrong

It didn’t show me the school to prison pipeline or the social misogyny

It fed me in spoonfuls the importance of a college degree

until I recognized the degree was valued more than my intellectual curiousity

I live in passion, seeing whats on my own left and own “right”

I fear not for what I don’t have, but for what society asks of me

My body is another corporate commodity, lifeless numbers labeled as my barcode

I read the ingredients of the label tagged on me  

I was next in the checkout line of highschool waiting for my receipt, my diploma

I fear not for what I don’t have, but for what society forgets

We are invisible, a liability, fighting for an opportunity

Screaming for welfare and demonized as welfare queens

Tying our old shoes, no they want the boot strap ideology

Swept under the rug of the prison quotas

Dog Fighting to get into prestigious colleges

Where I learned cutthroat classes meant cutting my throat and wearing a mask

I believe not in empty hope, but humanity

Past the checkout lines, outside the prison confines

Lies not schooling but education

Education that breaks this capital quota

And does not confuse or infuse money to lives

I believe not in empty hope, but our own agency

Where break the status quo of the status quo

Follow not in fear but in change

We open the books and write a new page

Realize that no matter how much we are beaten down

We fall up on our feet

I believe not in empty hope, but defining society

I throw away the knife used to cut throats and replace it with a community

Where your success is my success and where mine is yours

Where my receipt from the checkout line means the food I get isn’t all for me

Where I remember what the cost of the college degree is

Where these two words are the bridge to two worlds past the fear

A place where….

I believe

 

This poem is about: 
Me
My community
My country
Our world

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