Sonnet #293

If I could explain this slowly to every man and woman

with money, who does not wish to pay for the poor:

You Will Pay More to Hold Them Down If You Do Not Pay For

Giving Them Enough. You will build yourselves golden prisons 

hire armed guards. You'll pay to build a world of panopticons

Because none of them can be trusted if they do not have enough

The cost of policing, surveillance, enforcement, laws so tough

that decent folk fear it, it has a cost in dollars, squatting on

your golden horde is very high. Beyond that cost, you cannot walk

down streets in peace unarmed, you will never know the city

As a place of peace, only as a place where people talk

And power is your only word to share, build your worst kind of pretty

Your empty-eyed children will tremble at your funerary wakes

And the fear you feel could fade with just that little mercy and pity,