Please Please Please

LAMARKS // Ars Poetica

I heard a recent rumor you’re refilling the PPP

Pray tell, dear Senate overlords, will a cent trickle down to me?

I’ve stayed inside just like you said 

and put my life on pause

my company is mostly dead

We all knew there’d be sacrifice in this shared COVID cause 

You told us to be patient

and that help was on the way

but you forgot to mention that salvation

would be pay-to-play

See, everybody told me to use my bootstraps to climb

So I grew slow and steady without loans or credit cards, just fine

I poured my blood and sweat into my little company

but since I’m not a millionaire, I guess I can’t get PPP

Never fear, you said -- just apply for unemployment

You’ve got nothing to do now, so dial a thousand times for your enjoyment

Try to beat the system, learn by heart the robo-menu

but if you manage to get through, so sorry, nothing we can do

Waiting for a UI call, Waiting for EIDL

Waiting for some yeast and flour

Wait by the phone weight by the hour

Waiting for a Facebook grant, what generosity

Waiting for a dating app to announce if they’re funding me

Waiting for a handout from the lady who invented Spanx

Waiting ‘til our health data is sold and packaged as our “thanks”

Waiting till Jeff Bezos says he’s our new president

Waiting till May 1 to see if I’ll be able to pay rent

I’m starting to get desperate 

two months since I last earned a cent

Each day you say on the TV you’ll pay me what I missed

but why should I believe you?

Honestly, I’m fucking pissed.

Poor thing, you said, how’s this, we’ll send a thousand dollars in the mail!

If we don’t fire the postman first - forgot about that small detail.

Oh wait, the president just asked if he can sign his name in crayon

He’s planning to use your pittance to build his next campaign on

Still I’m waiting patiently and praying, baking, faking smiles online

for some reason still believing that this country isn’t run by swine

I keep applying for your help and keep on good behaving

And cover my survival with my hardfought small life savings

I sit in my apartment and each night clap for the docs

dying in the hospitals forced to make their PPE from socks

I meditate and write inspiring words for all those suffering

but my hatred for you’s boiling with every new discovery

of how all  that PPP just went to shad’wy corporate hacks

and how when our nation is down, you stab us in the back

I knew when I chose my career I’d not be playing a “fair” game

But not till now did I realize how low you’ll go - 

You truly have no shame.

So now a once proud independent business owner’s left

to beg for help from strangers as she’s quite nearly bereft.

Perhaps with fans and patrons we can build a covenant

With more trust and more justice than from our damned government

If you got that PPP or still make six figures, hey, great!

Here’s a link for you to save a wom’n forgotten by the state.

I've spent the past 7 weeks leading a group of 35+ international volunteer poets writing free poems for people struggling with COVID. Meanwhile, my NYC-based small biz, Ars Poetica, has been decimated due to pandemic. As National Poetry Month comes to an end this week, and my Poems for a World on Pause project has written over 300 poems for people in need of some home and compassion, I myself am more fed up, pissed off, and disillusioned than ever.

So for the first time, I wrote a poem for myself, about how I really feel as a woman, artist, and small business owner in the events/entertainment industry, falling through the cracks of our country's abhorrent response to coronavirus. While it is very much my personal experience, anyone who has struggled to apply for PPP, grants, or loans, or who has tried to file for unemployment, will relate.