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THE MONETIZATION OF SURVIVAL
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We used to catch the falling rain,
And pluck the fruit from off the bough,
But someone built a picket fence,
And sells the water to us now.
The earth was wide, the air was free,
A common floor for human feet,
Until they stamped a barcode on
The very right to live and eat.
THE COST OF BEING ALIVE
Now shelter is a speculative game,
And warmth is metered by the hour.
They’ve parsed the soil, the seed, the sun,
And leased us back the right to power.
To simply breathe, to stand upright,
Requires a subscription fee;
We trade our days to buy the rights
To basic, raw mortality.
THE LEDGER OF THE LAND
They commodified the baseline,
They put a tariff on the breath,
And made a handsome profit margin
On the distance kept from death.
CONCLUSION
We march inside a neon maze,
Where “living” is a luxury brand.
We pay the toll to stay alive,
On what was once a common land.
The wildest tragedy of all—
The cleverest trick they ever tried:
Is making human survival look
Like something we were blessed to buy.
~Red Bird, D.Sp, D.Met, Spiritual Advisor, Diviner