Tag Archives: poem about greed

The Bread Train for dVerse Poets

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The Bread Train

When you hop aboard the bread train, there’s no negotiation.
Folks aboard the bread train become a congregation.
It’s a happy wagon, a life-fulfilling ride.
Everything comes easy when you are inside.

Don’t bother about lowlifes who wait along the tracks.
You can’t be responsible for everybody’s backs.
This trip through life is better if you have some dough.
These folks who have an easy ride everywhere they go?

That there may be enough for all is what they do not know.
They want no interference with the status quo.
If folks don’t have what they do, it’s just because they’re lazy.
Those who think the bread train crowd will feed them are just crazy!

Every riff-raff wannabe can’t have what he wants.
If he can’t afford the bread train, let him eat croissants!!

For dVerse Poets: Train
Go HERE to read more train poems!

Avarice

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Avarice

The clutching maw of avarice devours everything,
like a furnace, burning up all that life might bring.

Alas, there is no medicine to curb its constant need—
for its constant hunger and its consistent greed.

It’s hollow heart cannot  recall what loving may be for,
so when love is given, it just calls out for more

without using what’s been given by returning it in kind—
never using its own heart for what it was designed.

Pity those who take and take without ever giving,
never fully realizing all the joys of living.

 

 

Prompts today are furnace, hollow, avarice, pity and medicine.
Image by Meg Jerrad on Unsplash.

Party Talk at Mar-a-Lago

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Party Talk at Mar-a-Lago

It’s a nightmare of prattle disguised as discussion,
but if you ask me, it is merely percussion.
They are not ennobled by the words that they speak
about all the profits and glory they seek.
They can buy costly furnishings but not good taste
with these fortunes collected in greed and great haste.
See their vain postures as they sip and feed?
We can only hope fate makes them pay for their greed.

 

Prompts for the day are: nightmare, prattle, disguised, ennoble and taste.

All That Glitters

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All That Glitters

Be mindful of your wishes lest fate should smite thee down.
What you think might bring a smile sometimes brings a frown.

Nowhere is it written happiness can be bought.
Too often excess riches are a trap wherein we’re caught.

Sometimes pristine palaces can turn into a cage
for those who sell contentment for a daily wage.

If fairy stories are the tales on which your hopes you gauge,
remember that their characters are prisoners of the page.

Those in ivory towers far above the earth
may not smell the flowers or recognize their dearth.

It’s one thing to be hungry, ill-provided for and flustered,
but once you have enough and your daily needs are mustered,

if you want to win the game of life, be sure to share the ball.
Just relax. Enjoy your life. You do not need it all.

Prompt words today are mindful, smite, pristine, fluster and nowhere.
Image by Sharon McCutcheon on Unsplash, used with permission.

Final Rights

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Final Rights

The legacy our mother left seems to have something missing.
Is it just coincidence I think I saw you kissing
her lawyer shortly after her funeral today?
It reminded me of earlier behavior, I must say.
Your high school English teacher whom you later held at bay
only after he had raised your grade from F to A.
Do I mean to insinuate it may have been a factor
in the raising of your grade that you’re such a primo actor?
Feigning school girl crushes until you’ve achieved your aim
and seducing gullible lawyers? Do I think that’s your game?
I must admit this codicil  that you have lately found
gives rise to questions. You should realize that we are bound
to question her late change of mind, leaving the bulk to you
when all the time that she was ill you never were in view.
The lawyer swears it’s aboveboard. These were our mother’s wishes.
Did she forget those countless times you would not do the dishes
but left the job to me as you hurried out the door?
The times you defied curfew, tracked up her just-mopped floor?
Because I was her favorite,  was it, then, her guilt
that made her deed to only you the house that Grandpa built?
Sister dear, your goose is cooked, for just a month ago
Mom fired the lawyer you seduced and hired one you don’t know.
He filed a new will signing the house over to me.
Mom foresaw your shenanigans and said they would not be.
Your lawyer’s response to your wiles? A small sin of omission.
Who could blame him for collecting his amorous commission?

Prompt words today are legacy, missing, reminded, insinuate and factor. Although the poem is fiction, this is actually the house I grew up in. 

Good Riddance?

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Good Riddance

They’re trying to railroad us, set us adrift
so we’ll never close this incredible rift.
They’ll write our obituaries, every one
It started the day that reason was done .
We surrendered control to the men who let cash
prompt their decisions most foolish and rash.

The delicate balance of nature upended,
they pillaged the earth until it grew offended
and began to fight back through hurricanes, fire,
droughts, floods, marine deaths and then acts more dire.
When all these disasters failed to inspire us,
her weapon became the coronavirus.

Now they flounder on, our greedy politicians,
less leaders than they are our nation’s morticians.
They stew about markets, fuss over the Dow.
As ever, cash profits are their sacred cow.
While those who must vote to try to defeat them
are all prisoners of home with no way to unseat them.

Can you not see the end with wildlife in the streets,
stampeding down pavement, their hollow hoof beats
like drums that announce humanity’s end?
What messages might they possibly send?
The earth isn’t dependent on mankind to thrive.
When we are long gone, nature will survive.  

Words for the day are delicate, dependent, obituary, adrift and railroad. https://reflectionsofanuntidymind.blog/

Animals Invade Cities As People Quarantine Themselves At Home.
Read the Story Here:  https://www.boredpanda.com/animals-in-streets-during-coronavirus-quarantine/?utm_source=google&utm_medium=organic&utm_campaign=organic

 

Evolutional Malfunction

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\Image by Francesco De Tommaso on Unsplash, used with permission

Evolutional Malfunction

In the shadows of the tundra, the lion hunts tonight.
What unsuspecting detour will still a gazelle’s flight?
Nightfall cancels the good fortune of the graceful beast.
The ballet of his progress has mercilessly ceased.
So nature feasts on nature in our world’s cruel plan—
animal on animal and man on weaker man.

Much as we hope that we’ve evolved, we cycle back again,
supplementing power by feeding on the pain
of people that we use as stepping stones to power.
What man can stand above unless other humans cower?
The nature of wild animals is that they give short shrift. 
The kill is sane and merciful. The slaughter sure and swift.

Mankind is the species where cruelty was born.
Their hunts don’t end in darkness, but leak over to the morn.
Men amassing billions while other billions starve—
how big is the kingdom that they hope to carve?
A lion with its appetite sated ends the slaughter.
Not so the questing magnate or his greedy daughter.

Send back the starving children, parentless and weak.
They will not have the mercy or safety that they seek.
Recycle them to other lions on the hunt.
In darkness or in light of day, their stalkers never punt.
Oh how the jaded mighty exercise their powers
by stacking bodies of the powerless to build their lofty towers.

 

Prompt words today are shadows, detour, fortune, lion and nightfall.

Easter Morning Confession

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Easter Morning Confession

“What’s all this hoopla over eggs
and animals with furry legs?”
My father chortled every year,
just loud enough for us to hear
while we lay scheming in our beds,
visions of rabbits in our heads
and candy eggs and chocolate,
wondering just where and what
we’d be hunting in the morning,
when, early and with no warning
we’d descend the long back stair
the earliest that we could dare
and set upon the living room
in the early morning gloom
to satiate that yearly lust.
We must have chocolate. We must!

Year after year, we slipped our gaskets
seeking to fill up our baskets.
Even now, that longing swells
when I hear those Easter bells.
So many years since I, a seedling,
commenced my yearly candy wheedling.

How many days, how many nights
did we anticipate delights 
well into our lower teens
of  Peeps and eggs and jelly beans.
and, best of all, that chocolate rabbit
became our yearly Easter habit.
Sitting regally on its ass
amidst the bright green Easter grass
in the baskets overflowing
with our coming and our going,
searching out that Easter stash
of candy, chocolate and cash.
A dollar hidden in one nest
was the very very best
find of the whole Easter season,
and in fact it was the reason
why Easter Sunday was the best—
our favorite of all the rest.

Later, to church, to sing and pray,
remembering just why this day
was celebrated, though I fear
that for us, year after year
there were more than one or two
kids sequestered in a pew
who were not thinking of the prayer,
but of layer upon layer
of goodies that awaited them
in baskets filled up to the brim.
For, though our hearts were pure and pious,
they could not dispel the bias
of a child’s rumbling gut
yearning for more chocolate!! 

The prompt today are egg, hoopla, seedling and longing. Here are the links:
https://ragtagcommunity.wordpress.com/2019/04/20/rdp-saturday-egg/
https://fivedotoh.com/2019/04/20/fowc-with-fandango-hoopla/
https://onedailyprompt.wordpress.com/2019/04/20/your-daily-word-prompt-seedling-april-20-2019/
https://wordofthedaychallenge.wordpress.com/2019/04/20/longing/

America is Frozen

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America is Frozen

America is frozen—held fast in winter’s maw,
her government held prisoner under a greedy claw.
For any children but her own, her arms grown arch and cold.
No room for diversity. No room for her to hold 
any but the richest, the whitest and the chosen.
No room left in liberty for any but the frozen.
“Give me your tired and your poor” relegated to the past
by the chilling Nordic air that holds us in its blast.

The thaw that brings the blush of spring—the budding of the flower
is held for ransom by the few who have usurped our power.
Our ship of state held fast by ice, its sails still bravely strain
to crack the ice and open up to justice once again.
If they only had the power to billow they might start
to bring us back to sanity and thaw each frozen heart.
The poor would share the power that only the rich can buy
and have their proper portion of the great American pie.

Prompt words today were thaw, power, sail and justice. Here are the links:

https://ragtagcommunity.wordpress.com/2019/03/14/rdp-thursday-thaw/
https://fivedotoh.com/2019/03/14/fowc-with-fandango-power/
https://onedailyprompt.wordpress.com/2019/03/14/your-daily-word-prompt-sail-march-14-2019/
https://wordofthedaychallenge.wordpress.com/2019/03/14/justice/

Challenging Fortune

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Click on first photo to enlarge all and read captions.

Macho rules the world, and
to the powerful belong the spoils.
They have us in the palm of their hand.
Time for change?
Who will lead the way? Warrior
or holy man?
And who will profit from the change?
All of these:

Challenging Fortune

Just when we’re feeling cocky—superior and svelte,
fate dishes out an uppercut, or one below the belt.
Its fickleness is onerous. Its lessons often hard.
Some end up with a loving cup and others with a shard.

So if misfortune catches you and holds you in its grasp,
for sure, good fortune harbors another in its clasp.
Rejoicing in their happiness may bring your pain’s surcease,
and looking at a larger view may bring you some release.

Some men are accustomed to eating all the pie.
They see no good in sharing. They vie and vie and vie
to horde the opportunities. It’s their sign of success.
They profit on our labors, grow rich on our duress.

It brings a sort of balance, this giving and this taking.
It teaches us that fortune is not just of our making.
There may not be enough good luck to insist that they share.
Label him a “socialist”If anyone should dare.

Where is the one who’ll stop them? Who will come to show the way?
What warrior or what holy man will  lead us in the fray?
Those who’ve usurped religion seem to have lost the point.
They don’t champion the underdog.  It’s rich men they anoint.

Everything is power and perhaps it always was.
For eons we’ve forgotten this, probably because
the photos of these  greedy men reaching for the stars,
cruising in their massive yachts and their racing cars,

look so pretty on the page. The minute that we see them,
instead of censuring the greed, we simply want to be them.
They stage their wars and make their gains and young men die to aid it.
And instead of ruing war, we honor those who made it.

The prompt words today were shard, onerous, opportunity and uppercut.

https://ragtagcommunity.wordpress.com/2019/01/17/rdp-thursday-shard/
https://fivedotoh.com/2019/01/17/fowc-with-fandango-onerous/
https://onedailyprompt.wordpress.com/2019/01/17/your-daily-word-prompt-opportunity-january-17-2019/
https://wordofthedaychallenge.wordpress.com/2019/01/17/uppercut/