Ninety Dollars

9 $10s 

90 $1s

900 dimes

9000 pennies 

Is that my worth? 

People, they're meant to be priceless

Traffickers, they call them useless

Victims, they feel so hopeless 

All this less,

Is just more pain. 

$90

If the Constitution was a catalogue

Would that be the price of my voice,

Or my silence?

Is a nice dinner

An outfit

A game ticket

A parking fine or

A cell phone

Worth more than the

Violation of an amendment?

9000 pennies can buy a slave. 

A person to control and

To brainwash, same price as

The product of mass market murder,

The childhoods

Of sweatshop workers

Who earn less than your allowance.

They are slaves to their

Hunger, their obligation to family

Just as victims

Are slaves to the

Drugs

Guns

And fear, that $90 buys.

I am not a victim,

But I could be.

In slavery, in misery,

The catastrophe

Of picking people's pockets

Being a dealer's pawn or

Selling my body,

My soul laboring

Day in, day out

For my worth, those $90

That I'll never see.