For those deprived of privilege, financial, or social stability, the cities of our nation become actively lethal contexts. Everywhere around the impoverished person is wealth beyond all possible imagining. They live, indeed, in a hell within a heaven. Lavish homes, gigantic buildings; thousands of empty rooms kept warm all night for… machines? Cars are treated with greater tolerance and care. Cars? Phones. Purses. Shoes.

It is a crime for a human person, especially a single man, to simply occupy space. If you have not been able to purchase space, you are a criminal. Space and time become your enemy. You are despised, hunted, harassed, threatened, beaten, raped…and -then- you will be arrested… because you are guilty of the crime of existing whilst poor. Existing whilst unconnected. Existing whilst momentarily deprived.

Poverty is insufficient ‘punishment’ for this unforgivable transgression; you must suffer torture in the very midst of explosive abundance and almost apocalyptic luxury. This is not something I understand second-hand. Or from the past. This is right here, right now. It is against the law to be human in our nation, unless you have appropriately purchased space and time in which this is to be overlooked briefly. Even if you have done this, you will find you have many other strange and irrevocable obligations…

And if you should stumble, you can be sure that your government, fellow citizens, police and ‘social advocates’ will be glad to lend a few kicks to insure you make it over the edge that leads to the point of no return. This is, after all, America. The land of the Free, and the Home of the Brave.