Wednesday, November 26, 2025

A Poem for an Owner Name Joe

A Poem for an Owner Name Joe

 

Arrogant

It is the word

If I had to choose one adjective to describe Joe

But it is based on speculations from whispering stories

Like how a worker in the warehouse was taking a five

Unbeknownst he came upon the owner smoking

“Do you have a light?” the worker inquired

“Sure,” said Joe handing him a box of matches

Supposedly the two had a nice chat

And at the end of the day the worker found his job terminated

They speak in fear of Joe

I have never seen him

But I’ve seen the stretch limousines

Full of important clients and Joe’s family of cronies

We are told they can’t raise our scant salaries

They’re not making enough profits

To me stretch limousines are for weddings and funerals

To Joe they are overhead

And the blatant racism that Joe fosters

The warehouse physically divides the building into two sections

The well paid desk jobs are all European or Asian

Asian only because Joe is from China

The warehouse and support are all Spanish or Black or Asian

We never intermingle except once a year on the holiday for a potluck meal

Sometimes they will put the excess food from their meetings into our lunch rooms

Like throwing their table scraps to the dogs

I could prove bias simply by a photograph

However judges are also prejudiced by color

They bow to the green of money

And Joe has plenty of that and the workers don’t

I could talk of injustices for a long, long time

But this is Joe’s poem

And like I said I’ve never met him

I can only guess at why that was

Perhaps because I wasn’t worth five minutes of his precious time 

In conclusion I’ll call him something worse than arrogant

A capitalist 


POLISHED FRAGMENTS

Poet To The Poor


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