Prolit

a literary magazine about money, work, & class

Rent Is Due July 1


Rent is due July 1st.
You now owe rent for July, June, May, April, March.
The landlord doesn’t care that you were ordered to stay home.
The landlord doesn’t care that you were only given $1,200 to live.
The landlord only cares about the maintenance of the status quo of your
exploitation.
They would rather you to live in the cold,
live in the dark,
live without water,
live without food,
then for them to live without pay.
When the landlord
tells you
they need you
to pay them
so that they
can pay their
mortgage and taxes,
you must understand what they are really telling you:

You shall pay
to maintain
the sheriff who’s called to evict you.
You shall pay
to maintain
the banks that keep you locked in roach-full renting.

When the landlord
tells you
they need you
to pay them
so that they
can pay their
mortgage and taxes,
you must believe them.

In lieu of burning down the landlord’s estate,
refuse to finance
the superstructure
that supports the base
of your exploitation.

What the landlord
does
not
say
is that they
function
in a land where abject barbarity is the rule.

Barbarity towards you – the prole
Temporarily alleviates them – the petite-bourgeoisie
From the barbarity of their vicious master – The Bourgeoisie

What the landlord
does
not
say
is that the
same sheriff
who throws your clothes
into a pile
on the side of the street
same banks
who blacklist your credit
from future renter’s agreements
will both be swiftly loosed against
the landlord
by the landlord’s landlord.

The landlord’s landlord will evict the greedy bastard
and replace him with someone more efficient in their imbibing of blood.
The bank will freeze the broken landlord’s account and
the landlord will find himself
pushed down into wage slavery with the rest of us.

With each act of bourgeois cannibalism,
the contradictions that crush our natural convictions
will grow more and more inevitably, irreconcilably incompatible
as two great classes of people stand face-to-face in competition.
Then! we tumble the superstructure
by smashing the foundation of
capitalism
slavery
genocide
death.
Rent is due July 1st.
The landlord is terrified you and I won’t pay.


CHristopher Carlson

Christopher Carlson is a recent law school graduate who is trying to correct the plight and exploitation of underrepresented peoples in the age of hyper-capitalism through advocacy and poetry.  He has had work appear in People’s WorldThe Magazine of the Green Economy, and others.