This poem, written thirteen years ago, chronicles a situation I encountered when I was trying to hire men in California to clear brush to help me ready my house for selling in the U.S.
The Daily Addictions prompt is Revenue.
Note: It has come to my attention that the setting of this poem isn’t clear. It is set in CA, U.S.A. and the initial character is American, as are the protesters. The men standing outside the lumber yard are Mexicans looking for work. Thanks, Marilyn and Patti for letting me know that this was not clear.
Unclear Agenda
His denims worn and torn, his hair unshorn,
he sat on a fruit crate near a stop sign
on an exit road just off the California interstate.
“Will work for food,” his sign said, so I stopped.
“Jump in,” I said, and he looked confused.
“I have a city lot taken over by castor beans,” I told him.
“I’ll give you a meal and ten bucks an hour to clear them.”
“Lady, that would take me a day or more,” he said.
“I can make more than that in a few hours, just sitting…
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lifelessons - a blog by Judy Dykstra-Brown 
I remember a few years ago when most of the Southern US states made Mexican workers illegal as farm laborers. They said if the work was there, Americans would do it.
Americans will NOT pick cotton. And now, we don’t grow cotton. The people in Mississippi went crazy trying to find ANYONE to pick the fruit vegetables, much less the cotton. in the end, the food rotted and the farmers gave up farming.
We do not pick cotton here. Or cut castor beans.
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I disagree Marilyn, people will pick cotten if you pay them enough to do it. We don’t pay people what they are worth to do the job.
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typo “cotton”
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Unfortunately, the men in my piece wouldn’t. They just wanted to bitch about people getting jobs they wouldn’t have taken no matter how much I paid. It would have interfered with their drugging and drinking.
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