deTermined - Jasmine Thompson

I Work

by Ashley Dean

I Smile my most concealing smile as you tell me I fucked up Brought you PepsiCo™ instead of Coca-Cola® and that Your subtle American palate Can Taste The Rainbow1 in the cocaine catch phrase of the latter. I Watch you Eat Mor Chikin2 while your shirt buttons Snap, Crackle, Pop3 Apparently there’s not Always Room For /your/ Jell-O™ But this is capitalism so You better Have It Your Way4 before your neighbor does first. I Know it’s your duty as a Capitalist Tool5 to retain and refrain from change, So We Try Harder6, spend after-shift hours cleaning your plates Your gluttonous waste Can no longer fit inside the prescribed Levi’s™ Jeans, American Dreams I Can’t seem to reach from the bottom of this corporate ladder. But The Citi Never Sleeps7 and the guy next to me Keeps Going and Going and…8 Acquiring minds want to know; ‘Are You In Good Hands?’9 And Wherever You Go the Network Follows10 — tell me, How Do You Spell Relief?11 I See your need to validate your sense of self-worth, material things; a nation of want While, below you, I work all day to pay my way to higher education The Antidote for Civilization12 So I can spend my life away in hundred dollar bills. I Wonder How our planet was turned into a product, reality Reassuringly Expensive13 When our philosophy of I Think Therefore IBM14 rendered us captive Why we’re all so willing to Just Do it15, and struggle to pay to live On a planet that we were born to live on.