The Gig Economy 

I moved to New York City 
with $400 in the winter of 2014. 
I made deliveries on my bike. 
The air was a wall of white. 

The streets were sheets of ice. 
I was blind in one black eye. 
I delivered a list of groceries 
for some grown-ass man. 

5 apples, 6 rolls of paper towels, 
2 six-packs of sparkling spring water, 
and 12 fucking bananas. 

The Food Emporium 
was out of fucking bananas. 
So I tried two more stores, 
which were also OUT OF BANANAS. 

It had been over an hour. 
The pay-out was four dollars. 
I grabbed three plantains and
arrived at grown-ass man’s high-rise
an abominable snowman.

The service entrance 
was through a labyrinth. 
The security guard was a minotaur 
who chased me up to the 70th floor

where grown-ass man 
appeared to live alone 
in his early twenties. 
I was late…

So he did not tip.

Elocution

When I grow up 
I want to be a soldier 
in the liberal
War on Christmas. 
 
The anchorman 
majored in broadcasting 
to learn that phony cadence. 
They all sound like Pleasantville,
 
plastic Kens and Barbies
trying to sell me Tupperware, 
Tunisian pearls, or the myth 
that being rich means one is smart. 
 
An assumption 
in a sumthin  
is a white noise.
Sure, sounds good. 
 
Have a factoid.   
Have a tabloid. 
Have an Altoid. 
Have a cute cow 
chanting space force. 
Have a viral virus. 
  
Cable box 
overheats 
underneath 
the vitriol. 
 
Tomorrow it will tell me 
science says 
dark chocolate is a panacea 
for politics. 

Can someone fact check my opinion?
I believe white nationalism  
is now as American as apple pie. 
 
My brother mortgaged two houses 
in the South. 
He says I have more money than him.
He’s right and I also own nothing 
and eat halal in a New York City gym. 
 
We fight each other 
in the same boat
but it doesn’t rock at all 
and we don’t make any waves. 

Signs 

Hacked out in lines,

the newsprint casts spells,
makes his story history,
obeys rhetoric and syntax.

   Next, we’ll tack a tax on sin,

      chuck things taken for granted
                 back into the woods
   
   to be absorbed by ferns.
 
        There’s an economic depression
 blooming in my mind.

Sometimes,
I stare out the window of the train  
as if it were a television set,

as if I’m not flying 
through a slow apocalypse
and forget

we are all animals

who survive 
by waiting   

in breadlines.

Free Will

Do the right thing 

if you can. 
If you can’t

then do wrong.
And forgive yourself 
and forgive everyone else 

if you can. 
If you can’t 

then you’ll die 
lonely.

Try not to do that 
if you can

because you can’t 
not die. 

A Subterranean Hellscape 

Feeling sick? 
(Or like a sardine 
packed in a tin can?)

The next station 
is closer than it will seem.  

Exit the train
and get pushed off the platform. 
Avoid the dog-sized rats. 

An employee 
will discover you 
eventually
if the mole people 
don’t first. 

Don’t vomit on the third rail. 

Please remember to take any trash 
you fell onto the tracks with 
back up to the platform with you 
and place it in a designated receptacle. 

If you see something
say something. 

If you feel something
shut the fuck up. 

Please do not lean on the doors 
or lay down on the seats. 

We are increasing police 
presence in the stations 
(mostly to catch fare evaders). 

If your card doesn’t work 
at the turnstile 
please swipe again. 
Use more finesse. 

If the sign has read 0 minutes 
until your train arrives 
for the past half-hour 
That’s tough shit. 

Exit the station
and take an Uber. 

We will be raising your fare
to 3 dollars per ride soon. 

Thank you for riding 
with MTA NYC Transit. 

Stockholm Syndrome 

Babe, when I get paid 
we’re gonna finally buy that boat. 

Babe, I’ll have a stack 
of the most romantic notes. 

We can finally get that horsepower. 
We can hit us that high note, 

that carbon cred, that grandeur,
that perfect lumbar support. 

Our prosperity gospel 
is a $1000 toothpick. 

Baby, we can speak in tongues. 
We can cure that male pattern 
dullness. 

We can get that impunity. 
We can get away with it.

Babe, we can get that dark money. 
We can clean our hands of calluses. 

We can buy ourselves titles, 
to which were not entitled,

name a library after us,
immortalized in stone as idols. 

Baby, we can make it rain. 
We can greenwash our images,

Afford the freedom to forget 
that freedom isn’t free. 

(We can sell what’s priceless)

We can influence the ethos,
stroke the lawmakers’ egos 

Pop a cork off into space. 
We can actually buy happiness. 

We can hover above the rest,
descend into moral bankruptcy. 

On Epstein’s flight manifest, 
Babe, that could’ve been you and me. 

We can finally be like our overlords,
the demagogues with whom we identify. 

After we send the aliens 
back to their other worlds,

we’ll finally get that mansion 
Christ prepared for us in the sky. 

*

Craig Kite is a New York City–based singer-songwriter and poet whose performances put words at the center. With a catalog shaped across countless open mics and intimate stages, his songs carry the quiet intensity of confessions and poems set to melody. Drawing on the lyric-driven traditions of Leonard Cohen and Bob Dylan, Craig is building toward his debut solo studio release, while publishing his first poetry collection, Sad City, and recording with his indie rock band, Pinko.