Thank you but how am I free?

I am a free and full of hope.

Although.

I didn’t get into those universities, even though I’m smart.  I don’t get those jobs, because I don’t know anyone there, who can shove open the stiff old door to get in.  I can’t move out my town, the place I was born, because I can’t afford the cities. Can’t pay rent there, can’t buy food there, can’t pay for a ticket there. So, I stay here. Which is fine. But how do I know, when I’ve never been anywhere else?

If I do get a leg up, what am I getting?  I don’t own my house, the bank does. I don’t decide what to do each day, my boss does. I don’t rake in dividends and profits, some bloke in a fancy tie and shoes that polish who belongs to a club I can’t get into does. 

I can’t speak because I am always on hold. I can’t hear because no one will talk to me, because I’m too small for them to see.  I can’t touch because I can’t reach out that far across the tracks. 

How am I free, when each day is the same for me, each cup of tea, each slice of toast, each walk in the rain to a bus too full to get on so I wait for the next? How am I free, when I get to work, I’m sent home again and people paid one hundred times more than me, decide if there is work or not, if I get paid or not, if I eat, or not?

How can I dream, when my dream is about not being what I am, but every morning I wake, and I am still me?  How can I dream when every time I wake, I feel more alone than it is possible to be and live? How can I dream when my only dream is not this? Not this.

How am I equal in a world full of people more equal than me, when I’ve had my turn, when there is a queue to get into the queue, to get into the queue? How am I equal when there is interest on the money I owe to pay off the debt to pay interest on the rent I owe to a man I’ve never met who owns my flat and is more equal than me?  How am I equal if I can borrow money to pay rent but not to buy my own house? How can I be equal, when you are over there, and I am here?

How is the law for me, when each time I need protection, it costs me money?  When, to get justice, I must pay more than I have, and the people with more money, buy more justice.  How is democracy for me, when I vote for people I’ve never met, paid five times more than me, with jobs on top of jobs, that pay even more for doing even less?  Why vote when each vote is treated like ash? Why speak out when it’s only my neighbour who hears me?

What freedom is this when we get poorer paying for each day of freedom?

My great grandfathers worked the land and mined the coal but owned none of it. My hands are theirs. My blood is theirs. And my life is that life. Still.