the poverty wall

the bricks are tear gas grenades and grades,
and jargon, batons, reactionary reporters,
psychiatrists, profitable mega-jails,
and snobby judges' wives
with their nails so carefully painted

the bricks are thick forms,
background checks, tanks,
unpaid library fines, probation officers,
unreadable vagrancy laws,
piss tests and piss "ideology"

it sprawls so far
and soars so high
that one loses
the will to even try