the fault in our scars in poetry

If you want to know why
you’re always hit on the most
and the weirdest and the worst
outside of the local gas stations
it’s because the gas stations profit
from being regular vortexes of
socio-economic desperation.

The gas station is the last place
terrible people will be kicked out
because they know they can overcharge
the people who’ve been kicked out everywhere else
to buy their beer and food and cigarettes
when everyone else is just running in for gas
and MAYBE a drink or a lottery ticket like a normal.

Gas stations like their mark-up whales
more than they like random customers
just gettin’ gas and a Snapple
so they don’t kick out the perverts and harassers
that’s why you’re always getting hit on most
by the weird losers hanging around a gas station
that’s why gas stations are so rife with madness.

Libraries are like this too
but for the diametrically opposite reason
for the more altruistic reason of understanding
they’re non-profits and a lot of people out there
have literally nowhere else to go in the world
that won’t make them buy something
just to be inside of a building.

Short-term vulture capitalism
pushes the damaged out to both edges
to both extremes and that’s where
the people no one else will take goes.

It’s not right you’re getting
so grossly hit on, of course, but
maybe understanding why helps a little?
The fault’s not in you, dear Brutus
rather in our broken systems.