Value Of Life

In your eyes,
What value has life?
What significance does it hold?
Every heartbeat,
Each birth,
Every soul,
Are they sacrosanct?

In your mind,
Does the value vary perhaps?
Is one life equal to another?
Peasant and Queen,
Youngling and elder,
One side of a border to another,
Are we all the same weight in gold?

I do wonder,
If there even is a decisive tariff,
And if fate is perhaps a better judge,
Chance a superior appraiser,
Do we just flip a coin,
Roll the dice,
To choose one life or some other?

Profiteer

Some souls are possessed by a green devil,
The spectre of avarice,
That glitch in human nature,
An eye for gain at others expense,
Be it famine or war or natural disaster,
There is always profit to be made,
Greed will find a way,
Cataclysms for the many,
Are opportunities for the few,
To hell with the consequences,
As well as everybody else,
When the sky gleams crimson,
Nine of ten of us will suffer,
And one will be making a mint.

Urchins And Earls

In all of humanity’s tenure,
Too much weight is given to bloods quality,
From the lordly to the lowly,
From the scabbiest urchin,
To the most dignified earl,
Our blood drips all the same,
From the same fresh wounds,
Financial elitism is not a virtue,
Poverty is not a character flaw,
In this bleak world though,
We are taught very different,
That humanity comes in tiers of quality,
But it’s a farce,
That wines quality is not derived from status,
But from the purity of ones actions,
That is all that defines us.

Datastream

We are all data,
Little binary toys,
A horde of zeroes,
Leashed to digital space,

Simply prey to a carnivorous system,
Swimming like salmon through databases,
Pushing all of the opulence upstream,
While being picked off by bears in taxman gown,

We are just numbers to be counted,
A sticker book collection,
For some child in a highborn office,
A creature with a taste for silver spoons.

Green Creed

A virus has spread rapidly betwixt populations,
Not of the medical slant,
But one of conditioning,
That green corruption,
A religion of dollar notes and bankrolls,
Worship of excess,
We are converted at birth,
The nickel and cotton are the priests of this cult,
An emerald plague,

We submit ourselves to their prestige,
Their amassment,
It pervades every facet of our lives,
From the crib to the crypt,
The slum up to the manse,
Yet this is no sacred belief system,
It’s a creed laid upon viridian mandates,
It’s capitalism,
It’s greed or starvation.

Corned Beef

The day at the salt mines ends,
I flee home broken,
To my plasterboard burrow of a bedsit,
I lay counting cracks in the wallpaper,
Watching the roaches play kiss-chase,
And the rust painting scores on the piping,
These four walls are my only companions,
And my only entertainment,
This dreary ceiling is my penny cinema,

Under these flickering lamps doing their dance,
I’m daydreaming about the corned beef,
That is my daily bread,
That is my ration,
I’m down on my luck,
Down and out,
Finance has thrown me out,
But at least I have those tins,
At least I have corned beef.

Government Work

I am bound to this place,
Consumed by these walls,
These offices of authority,
Branded with this name badge contract,
Fastened a bit deep to my chest,
I am to action this places will,
I am its blade and quill,
A rusty cog in an old machine,

Some serf comes before this department,
She comes begging for monetary salvation,
She will soon be homeless,
But we are no charity,
Too many have come begging today,
So the red stamp denies her,
Her tears a prayer to this place,
The doorman will remove her,

All in a days sweat,
Good enough for government work.

Finances

I walked up to the cash machine,
That sterile plastic confessional,
A personal prayer mat,
And I gawped into the screen,
As it became something of a reflection,
A seeing stone,

To this world we despise,
And how it functions under our watch,
I see folks smoking cigars of rolled up dollar bills,
Piercing veins with needles fresh from the contractual dotted line,
Cutting lines with credit cards,
That green currency has become a foul narcotic,

We all need it,
That nickel and brass addiction,
People bleed and die over this financial creed,
Throats slashed on Wall Street,
But money does not purchase happiness,
The only product it truly buys is discordance.

Affluenza

I heard of a lordly fool,
A fool with a fetish for wealth,
Born to indifferent affluence,
From cot to silver spoon,
From bosom to executive guise,
This life produced a man to whom position is all,
It bred a cold soul,
Akin to an elite android,
Bereft of accountability,

The numbers must rise,
Damn the consequences,
Our fool runs down pedestrians,
Blue collars broken and bruised by drudge,
Jobs lost by his charges,
Workers perish in an industrial accident,
Who cares?
He feels the protective privilege of bounty inherited,
And the numbers must rise.

War Chest

Each leader has a war chest,
Millions,
Paid for with blood and limbs,
The gold of the chest,
Pounds and dollars and roubles,
Minted in hells flames,
Emblazoned with skulls grinning,
Baying for oil and miles,

The true fuel for warfare,
The ammunition of conflict,
As the chest opens its charnel maw,
Arms dealers rub their hands,
And children cry in droves,
The drool of the chest,
It looms over free lands,
And shadows of bombs fall soon after.