Knowledge = Debt

Slaving away at these pages

 

Society told me I’d get higher wages

 

Instead all I’ll get is higher debt

 

Higher learning and education beget

 

Loans

 

Bills: the only thing I own

 

 

Now I’m an indentured servant to the banking institution

 

It’s the new form of prostitution

 

Creditors the new pimps, the new thugs

 

Collecting money; the most exploited drug

 

Gonna pay till my skin and bones smolder down

 

I’ll be free when my ashes are spread around

 

Creditors can’t find me

 

in Dante’s purgatory

 

 

Thought education was a natural right

 

Interest loops around my neck yanking tight

 

But like everything else, it comes with a price tag

 

I suffocate and gag

 

Cheeks colored like the Japanese sun

 

Face is about to explode like after the war was won

 

When the atomic bombs fertilized the land

 

The concept “free education for all” banned

 

Like the Catcher in the Rye.

 

Health, education, shelter, food; one must buy.

 

You’re only as free as your purchasing power

 

We are just the falling petals of a flower.

 

Sick, illiterate, homeless, starving; dried-up

 

Our only freedoms lie-in the Urn cup.

 

 

“Why did you do it then?” people ask me

 

I guess I rather take my chance with a degree

 

You gambled on that house and auto

 

Now you’re using a penny to scratch off that lotto

 

Thought you avoided that “balance due”

 

Ducked out on higher education but bills still accrue.

 

Foreclosure signs are sprouting up in the yard

 

Overdrawn on your credit card

 

We’re all on the same boat

 

Participated in signing those promissory notes

 

Just depends on what debt you chose

 

Our spirits will continue to be bulldozed.

 

 

I adopted a child and named her Sallie Mae

 

Can’t have a child until I repay

 

Signed those papers so I could get an education

 

Instead signature approved financial castration

 

 

Bank statements slowly paper cutting the casing

 

Down my legs the blood is racing

 

From my reproductive glands

 

Holding them in my hands

 

One last time.

 

Blood and slime

 

Squeezing thru my fingers

 

Resembles raw chicken skin, a smell lingers.

 

 

Higher education is money trap; with an increase

 

Of mental prowess comes a decrease

 

In finances.

 

For humanity to have advances

 

Education is the tool

 

But society is run by greedy fools

 

Herding sheep on barren ground

 

While swimming in dirty money abound.

 

 

Unfortunately it’s a society of credentials

 

Killing the youth’s potentials

 

By teaching distorted courses

 

Fattening up the armed forces

 

While schools lose weight.

 

I’ll be a part of that unemployment rate

 

Or maybe a janitor with a degree

 

Time will only tell or,.. time will be stripped from me.

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