What They Think Of The Rich.....(Revised) Poem by RIC BASTASA

the way it was worded
justifies poverty, as though
the poor people have no faults
too of their own, you

envy the rich, the way they flaunt
wealth, and you say, you have not
seen them cry, or if they cry at most
it could only be once a year, you

wish that they too must cry their
rivers, groan like galvanized zinc
tread by the lost kids in town
sniffing methamphetamine
you want to see their eyes as red
as inflamed bruises after a brawl

the rich too must speak of the
Poor's lack, their hibernation for
all these years, for what they only
know to get rid of their sufferings
seem only to be a bloody revolution,
which most of the time fail,

or that they have not devoted
their bodies to dedicated work,
that patience of the yellow skin,
those eyes that must wake up
as earliest birds in the fields of hay,

for what we are is not found in the stars
or the lines of our palms,
we are what we make of ourselves,
that poor man has spent all his nights
in drunkenness killing hope
always desiring the easy way out
robbing those who earned their dues
in the hours of so much waiting
and thinking, and years and
years of hard work and
suffering.....