Untitled (Excepting Donations)

A poem about false charity.

I'm tired
of coffee-shop messiahs
telling me what an awful person I am.  I'm

tired
of hearing the names of Third World countries
rattled off in slow,
laundry list
monotony—
one
two
three—
so I can tally all the people
who have it worse than me.  I'm

even more tired
of that one special case,
whatever special case it is—
pick your country off the wheel
of poverty and join the cause of the hour.

I'm tired of trendy salvation.

Tired of
the official, Oprah Winfrey edition, one-hundred-percent-recycled-material pamphlets
covered in fair-trade coffee stains
being waved two inches from my face

while some girl who's never known hunger
tells me what utter dogshit I am.

She's right about one thing:
I don't know true desolation.  But I'm

tired
of cookie-cutter, save-the-whales royalty
who think desolation smells
like the library on a saturday night.

Desolation smells
like a smoldering crater of fuck you.