Ninety Dollars
9 $10s
90 $1s
900 dimes
9000 pennies
Is that my worth?
People, they're meant to be priceless
Traffickers, they call them useless
Victims, they feel so hopeless
All this less,
Is just more pain.
$90
If the Constitution was a catalogue
Would that be the price of my voice,
Or my silence?
Is a nice dinner
An outfit
A game ticket
A parking fine or
A cell phone
Worth more than the
Violation of an amendment?
9000 pennies can buy a slave.
A person to control and
To brainwash, same price as
The product of mass market murder,
The childhoods
Of sweatshop workers
Who earn less than your allowance.
They are slaves to their
Hunger, their obligation to family
Just as victims
Are slaves to the
Drugs
Guns
And fear, that $90 buys.
I am not a victim,
But I could be.
In slavery, in misery,
The catastrophe
Of picking people's pockets
Being a dealer's pawn or
Selling my body,
My soul laboring
Day in, day out
For my worth, those $90
That I'll never see.