Sticking It to the Man
“This thing couldn’t have fallen apart faster if you’d bought it at Ikea.”
– Mick Herron, Slow Horses
An intransitive verb meaning an act
of civil disobedience to protest
the capitalist establishment:
Chris, Ken and I decided
to “stick it to the man.”
Also, poor college students,
we could use the extra dollar
for more worthwhile purposes.
Not that it was a “plan,”
more like a spur-of-the-moment decision:
having drunk our cups of weak coffee
in the booth at Lum’s,
high on the joints we’d smoked earlier,
the Stones’ “Street Fighting Man”
coming tinnily out of the jukebox,
we walked out into the winter night
without paying for our purchase,
bold as banditos, feeling righteous,
a blow against the oppressors.
A block away, having already forgotten our deed,
the manager surprised us, his own righteousness
seething like a steaming coffee urn,
suddenly looming into view,
blocking our path, threatening to call the cops.
Above all we didn’t want to cave,
but we’d been busted, for sure,
mumbled something about temporary forgetfulness,
handed over the cash,
trying to tell ourselves
we hadn’t done something stupid.
We were just the oppressed proletariat.
©2023 Charles Rammelkamp All rights reserved.
Charles Rammelkamp is Prose Editor for BrickHouse Books in Baltimore. Two full-length collections were published in 2020, Catastroika, from Apprentice House, and Ugler Lee from Kelsay Books. A poetry chapbook, Mortal Coil, has just been published by Clare Songbirds Publishing.