Understanding the poor

If you'd like
to be
poor
go
pick cigarette butts
out of ashtrays
or
buy a gun
and sell drugs
or hell,
use drugs.

Don't be poor.
Understand 'poor'.
Not just the impoverished,
but the crazy
the hungry,
the addicted,
the broken-
home,
the single mother,
too.

By the time you
are poor
you've lost your
damned mind.