Trade

"We traded up,
we traded out" We say


Huts for sky scrapers...
Hoes for tractors...
Hoop-skirts for booty-shorts...
Hats for do-rags...


"We traded up
we traded out" We say


Women can vote,
Negroes can attend Harvard and Oxford,
Non-discreet lovers can come out of hiding...
We are modern...


"We traded up,
we traded out,
Opportunity for all,
Opulence for the masses"




"We stayed put,
We stayed in a cycle.
Tyranny lives on,
In a morphed figurine of ourselves."


We may have traded green for machine,
We may have traded the opera for the telly,
We may have traded the postman for email...


Yet the desire and hunger,
the lore and the tale
of Man's menacing issues
live on into the future.