Monday, December 7, 2015

Belly of the Beast

I belong to a poetry group on Facebook. It's founder, Nika Renee, gives us prompts, and a week to write. I really don't have a week, so when I have a few minutes I just do the best I can. I am so pleased with this one that I tossed off this morning, off the top of my head, that I just have to share it. The prompt this morning is "the moral economy."  I thought that would be murder to write to, but it turned out to be pretty easy. Here it is.  Anybody want to illustrate it?

The Moral Economy
(to be read out loud, at a somewhat Suess-esque tempo)

I'm reporting to you now
From the belly of the beast
Where we've all settled in
To a thing-fest, a feast
There are sofas and chairs
There are restaurants and wines
There are toys on the floor
And toys for our minds
There is Google and Snapchat and Twitter and such
They take bitcoins and visa and cash if you must
You can spend whole days indulging your passions
Without ever partaking of real interaction
It's hypnotic. It's distracting. It's numbing. It's cold.
And you might never notice, until you grow old,
That you've narrowed your life down to stuff you can buy
And things that might thrill you
And new things to try
But you've missed the fact
That the world's floating by
With its chaos, its conflict,  its war and its norms,
With human pain and child hunger, momma's grief, papa's storms.
With injustice, with plunder,
With rape and with pillage,
Because it's all happening
In some far off village,
So it's no trouble of yours
And though you may twinge
You do not lend a hand
Though you tut while you binge
I have noticed this place
Has no windows to see from
And no pools for reflecting
No chapels to free us
From the throes of this madness
That has crippled our minds
Fed us into a fast lane
And gobbled our time,
And will leave us old
With vision that's waning,
With aches and with pains
And with lonely complaining
And those who would help us
Send us "likes" and thumbs up
Which is less than a Band-Aid
When what we need is a touch
And it's about that same time
When you take a step back
And notice the belly has walls that are black
And although there hangs art
It covers a truth
We've been absorbed by our greed
And it's swallowed our youth
And it's swallowed our middle
And it's swallowed our end
And we suddenly see
We must get out of this pen
So let us scratch, let us scramble
Let us #occupy and shout
Let us all scream together
Pray God the beast spits us out.

3 comments:

  1. Excellent, Sandy! Enjoyed your "poem." joegall40@gmail.com By the way, how did your Mussar study come out? I found it liberating. Joe

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