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
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
