Poverty 11/14

Poverty
is cloaked,
draped in the dream scraps,
the crumbs at the table
of the American Dream,
and many haven't "escaped".
Poverty isn't some newly devised
for profit prison
where vacant beds begged to be filled
and politicians' pockets prosper.
Poverty is more than a mindset;
it's a way of life
where immediate gratification
is coupled with the cyclic challenges
of daily hunger,
inadequate shelter,
and underemployment.
Simple words
describing someone else's experience
unless community service
forces you to see how ineffective
they are.
I'm not here to change your perception
of poverty.
Choose a different word,
b/c 8 letters isn't enough.
Poverty is a paragraph
or a book,
a thesis
or at least an article's worth
of experience.
Being po' means those other letters
don't exist right now
and this is as far as we can spell it.
We aren't abbreviating;
we speak in exasperation.
Poverty is the living knowledge
that one paycheck
demolishes whatever we worked
so hard to build
or creates a new life,
no matter the amount.
Poverty isn't just
projects and pity;
it's part and parcel to
the pendulum
we call paradise.
Pay Attenion.