I was dreaming I was screaming
At the billionaire elite
“How can you buy a mansion?
Millions are too poor to eat.”

I thought of all the hedge funds
And carried interest loopholes
Paying for diamond encrusted toilets
For pampered rich poopholes

I was sickened that paintings
From hundreds of years before
Sold for enough money to house
A thousand homeless folk and more

They were trading ancient treasures
For billions of hoarded bills
To line their modern-day castles
And to populate their wills

Living in gated enclosures
To give them peace of mind
Protecting “them” from “us”
The best method they could find

I imagined all the healthcare
And food and homes they could buy
How they could educate the masses
Without batting a servant’s eye

The immorality saddened me
Until I began to awake
And saw that every bit was true
And that everything’s at stake

When sixty-two people own as much
As half the world combined
There’s no way you can convince me
That they’re not just robbing us blind

“The free market system”, they tell us,
“Will make it right in the end”
But it never does and it won’t
When they think there’s nothing to mend

If the system works for those
Who almost always benefit
There’s no incentive for them
To let anyone try to amend it

And the rest of us are expendable
Interchangeable, exploitable
We’re replaceable and obtainable
But most of all we’re tameable

Give us just enough to think
“Whew. Maybe I’ll be okay.”
But make us think we earned it
So we forget what my dream had to say