Poem: Monied (Again)

Money is the Opiate of the Masses, now.

Four walls and a sink, to call my own.
I own my room for 7 days, for $300.
The price of dinner for my dad.

A Real Person again.
High from Privacy,
exhilarated by my money in the bank.
All the world exists for me.
Want to eat: I can.
Want to sleep: I can.
All it took was money, after all that.

Half my Neuroses melt away instantly
-Simply because I now have choices.
Choices the broke person lacks,
simple privacy the homeless don't have,
Respect, which money does buy.

How can I explain the impotence,
the insecurity, the hunger, the jealousy,
the fears, the shame, the filth,
that comes,
from simply being without?

I can't.

No one can understand
unless they have been there.
Ask an old drunk, dying alone in a gutter.
Ask a full-fledged junkie, screaming himself silent
in a jail cell, for lack of medicine.
Ask a new mother, who has just given birth.

You'll never understand any of them.
Until you are one.

My "friends" come back around,
happy to see I have money again.
Now they can see me
without guilt or shame.

I use my room's sink ten times a day,
to wash my face,
because I can; I paid for it.
How wealthy America truly is,
where for $300 a week
I get my own room with a sink
for 7 days.
No more washing at Safeway
under the dubious eyes
of Security Guards.
I check on my room several times a day;
Expecting it to disappear like a mirage.
But every time I turn the lock,
everything is just as I left it.
Lights still on, window still open,
bed unmade, smelling of my brand of cigarettes.

Home at last.
Home at last.
Home at last,
for now.