Look At Us We’re Privileged!
We Live In Plastic Worlds
We're Addicts To Caffeine
And All The Benzo Pills
We're All Having Break-Downs
As We Learn To Integrate
Here, At The Academy
We See Sunshine Once A Day
Look At Us We’re Privileged!
We Work And We Don't Reap
Eighty Hours E’ry Week
In This Free Factory!
Look At Us Were Privileged
With All Our Cystic Acne Scars To Prove
The Stress That Never Leaves Us
That Breaks Us Through And Through
Look At Us We're Sick!
Do You See The Darkness?
On The Pallid Skin Beneath Our Eyes?
Look At Us, We're Strong And Brave!
No Time To Sleep, To Eat, To Pray!
Look At Us, We're Privileged!
Knowing Someday We’ll Be Sane!
Did They Tell You?
It's Not Included With The Books
Did They Include Fluoxetine
In Your Semester Bills?
Did They Tell You On Day One:
That You Lacked Essential Skills?
Do They Write Off The Psychiatrist, Nutritionist, And Somnologist . . .
Underneath Our Student Fees?
Is Your Apathy Included On The Bursar's Bottom Line?
Is The Suicide Of Normality
Tabbed Underneath Your Net Id?
Look At Us We’re Privileged!
Adjusted To Normalcy
We’ve Comprised Our Humanity.
Did They Tell You You'd Need EBT?
And The Food Pantry is Never Fully Stocked?
And your health insurance is Not Included With The Books
But be assures your health will soon be abhorrent
And grey hair grow upon your young head
Did They Tell You They Would Break Your Heart And Spirit Too?
Oh, How Lovely Is This Magic School!
Transforming generational poverty into eternal debts.
Did They Include Lexapro
In Our Semester Bill?
From Day One you had three jobs
And yet
You Already Lacked Essential Skills?
Did They Put questioning my own morality in between the Student Fees
That the faith I had would be tested by the poverty I face
That the capital that college gave me
Might also become my own disgrace?
That to my rent and food
I might lose some of the smile from my face?
How High is The Cost?
Of my Humanity?
What a privilege it is to know what I do-
Yet the labor runs red
And this title has tears written in ink and in bone
Momma did you know
I want to go home
Sometimes this great privilege is my greatest sorrow
Because so many dies I dread the morrow
I hunger for love and I hunger to run
I hunger for food
Sometimes also for rum.
But i stay in my place
I will not drop my face
Though my heart is fallen in shame
The ones who start poor its not always a privilege to remain in the academy's game
They don't pay me enough to delay houses marriage children
They don't pay me enough to kill all my passions and joy
In pursuit or a title
Publishing articles tenure and more
They don't pay me enough
Look at me mom Im so privileged to afford an education keeping me confined to poverty
To an institution i don't believe
Praising the god of knowledge
The one who didn't give me air to breathe
But surely takes away
Look at me momma I am so privileging
Maybe ill have a baby some day far away
Look at us im privileging
I can analyze my own poverty with statistics and corpus studies
Look at me momma Im so privileged is this what you desired for me?
That you worked so hard to give me
Its a parasite
They take so much from me
Do you see now momma?
In some sense you were luckier than me
I hurt more when I sleep
I know more about global history
It hurts so much just to read
Knowing so much
and bound to sit to read
Do you see momma
Im not always privileged
Sometimes i would just like to be loved for just
Me
We are not machines. We are not meant to produce, consume, and output, with a small margin of error. Our value is not representative of our fruition. We have value simply by living. Our value lies in the love we give, the joy we share, the ways out hands, hold, help, and heal. Students, and academics who struggle with this sedentary and consumptive lifestyle aren’t alone. We aren’t supposed to live solely in books— its not natural. Higher education, is a freedom, but sometimes it is a costly one, and those costs are not always immediately visible.
The Silent Singer 