Bread and Roses

Poetry

But yield who will to their separation,

My object in living is to unite

— Robert Frost (from Two Tramps in Mud Time)

i.

We call it worth.

The gold standard,

the value of things

monetized.

The yellow metal

that makes the white man

crazy.

We’re hypnotized

by a rock, asleep

fitfully in the dream

of have and have-not.

What is my worth?

More if I sit in a corner office,

less if I stand behind a counter

handing you change?

More if I wear a uniform,

less if it doesn’t come with

a badge?

More if I work hard

for someone else

less if I daydream

for myself.

More if I clock in

with the flu,

less if I make music

in the subway.

Hot dogs are worth more

than a rainforest.

Beauty is an industry, not a Way.

A tank is worth more

than a poem.

We’ve internalized

the legacy of the wrong revolution,

turned our ancestors’ trauma

back on ourselves

until our souls are starved,

repressed, denied:

You’ll never make money

drawing pictures.

ii.

I’ll hand you some change:

I had to change my mind

before my life could follow.

Call that a vocation,

a calling, if your Latin’s rusty.

I had to put my feet into the sea.

I had to listen to the trees.

They weren’t caught

in my web of perception.

They knew what I forgot:

My joy and my sorrow

create worlds.

I had to listen to my dreams.

I had to learn a trickster’s schemes

to spring the trap

of that old story,

the nightmare

I kept waking to.

I had to believe so I could see:

I’m here to bridge the worlds.

I’m here to lift the veil.

It is not this culture’s place

to judge the worth

of what it does not know.

---

Special thanks to Nimue Brown of Druid Life for introducing me to the phrase “internalized capitalism” and inspiring this poem.

Photo courtesy of Museums Victoria and Unsplash

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