Love the Ones You're With
In the 60s and the 70s
The economy was booming
Guns and butter
Better times were looming
But not for everyone
Sit-ins and marches
Riots and rebellions too
Trying to level the playing field
Tired of not making do
The blacks insisted
The whites resisted
The browns were two-fisted
So the door opened a crack
Room for a few who were new
What did people do?
Two by two
They entered America’s ark, a new place
Equally unequal
They came color by color to state their case
Black Brown Yellow Red
Separately they made their bed
The idea took hold:
Love the ones you’re with
Black Brown Yellow Red
Separately they made their bed
A few got through
And moved on up
A few more got through
And moved on up
But then came the 80s
And the economy moved on down
It was morning in America
Time for Reaganomics
Worldwide competition
The race to the bottom had begun
Today
A generation later
Seems like everyone’s sliding down
From redneck to Rastafarian
And everyone in between
No health care
No wealth share
Does poverty still have a color?
Yes!
Look at any prison
It’s not just the rich who are missing
Once the book of exodus said
There’s a job in Chicago for anyone from anywhere
Now it’s ninety per cent black teen unemployment there
Does poverty still have a color?
No!
There are counties in Kentucky and West Virginia
Where over half the kids are poor
And Rust Belt towns are now the outer ring of inner cities
The factories have left
The gravy days are no more
Does poverty still have a color?
Let’s just say the situation is fluid
And that fluid is building up
And the dam’s about to break
When the stock market crashes
And the real estate bubble bursts
Your house note
You won’t be able to pay it
If you got a prayer you better pray it
The sheriff will come and he will say it:
“Get out! You cannot stay!”
There will be a rainbow of repossessions
Two by two and ten by ten
When this will happen nobody knows
But our economy cannot last
Its only foundation is credit card flows
The middle class of every color
Will be pushed out into the street
Sharing what space they can find
With the new folks that they’ll meet
Those others without a roof or a floor
Those others who never got through the door
The homeless
The gangs
The welfare moms, the Gulf war vets
The immigrants who gambled on America as the land to place their bets
This will give new meaning to
Love the ones you’re with
Love the ones you’re with
A change of thinking so profound
Makes you wonder if we’ll hear that sound
So we have to ask the poets to get us ready
From redneck to Rastafarian
And everyone in between
No health care
No wealth share
We have to ask the poets to get us ready
To love the ones we’re with
Poem / 2007