Blank // Worker

(album: Illusory Walls - 2021)

Ohio river, stomachache
Pray DuPont, our water is safe
If we don't die out here on the grass
We might one day be middle class

As distant now as frat parties
A labor strike, a Ferrari
The big house way up on the hill
The workers that its owner killed

My grave, my birth, being on the news
Burning money, and feeling loose
Thick clouds of foul-smelling air
Polluted rivers, thinning hair

There's a chemical spill in Parkersburg
The whole highway was overturned
I breathe the same air as the church
The football game, and worms in dirt

From Belpre down to Ravenswood
The trees sapped up with nothing good
Before the sweat dries on our skin
The faucet always burned our hands

A four-hundred-thousand-dollar drug
Versus one more time my mother's hug
A private firm of equity
Dealt cancer into my family

I saw there was a shadow bank
The landlord pleased, the economy tanked
May the lower class remember this
And every rich man get what's his