Money the Almighty Dollar

A poem by John Fleming

We all need to make a living, but claiming that won't suffice,

When the rich have all the money, and you in their vice;

"You've got to earn it, work for it," they say,

But the economy offers no good jobs,

And I didn't create that institution anyway;

I'm not really unemployed, and I'm not idle,

But they tell all the idle, except the idle rich,

That you're flirting with the devil,

Ain't that a bitch?

What does success mean? Who are the successful and who the failures?

It seems to depend on the neighborhood-

Big houses for the wealthy, and servants to boot,

While in the workers' district the homes are mean, crowded and filthy,

And that comes down to the problem's root;

For to be poor, is but to have no riches, unlike the wealthy with more;

So success it's plain to see,

Is nailed to the dollar as firm as can be;

Our society, all complete,

Is controlled by a corporate elite:

So any talk of who gets what in the nation,

Must adhere to the corporation;

Lackey$, cronie$, flunkie$, and pluguglie$, to wit,

Are bound to abound in Inc., give it credit!

But some inherit it, and the corporate-censored media love not to mention that,

Whereas it is actually so relevant,

That one may smell a rat;

One notices how little they call just that the heir and heiress,

So instead refer to the them as-what? some kind of "prince" and "princess"!?

(Democracy or hereditary nobility or hereditary plutocracy?)

For to call a spade a spade is subversiveness;

Also, there are others like mean jokers,

Who sit on corporate boards,

And are condign to assign to themselves huge rewards!

Thank the Lord, or pagan gods,

For whatever little you have or can save,

Cultivate virtue and enjoy your meager goods,

As even several gods have lived in the woods,

And in this way the commoners are made to behave;

"Money doesn't make you happy," just play the role of your social station,

And groan and sweat, work all week long,

If you can but live with that rationalization;

There's consensus, you see, about to have or have no money,

But in reality some exist, as the pencil of the Holy Ghost put it,

In sudore vultus alieni,

Some people live it up, though not working,

In the sweat of other men's brow, they spend and consume lavishly,

It does not take Veblen's theory to know, their own chores shirking,

(Then, sure to kick down the ladder by which it ascended, the leisure class is smirking).

Hence, we are told, if a man's fortune be from oro negro or gold,

Whether "earned" or merely trust funds of old

"More power to 'em," it doesn't matter,

For hauling in, somehow, the former or the latter;

But I suspect, and want to make clear,

That we all have to get simolean willy-nilly, each his fair share,

Not in the manner of John D. the First or Simon Legree,

But, as the coppers say, "civil-like," cooperatively;

Which leads me to state,

That if it were my preference,

To cruel antisocial competition abate,

And with type of society to reference,

Socialists have cleared it up in debate:

In class society there can be no democracy,

But in classless, the rest is cooperation, and history.

John Fleming

John Fleming is a Midwestern American who, by speaking German, French, Spanish

and native English, knows exactly four times as many languages as the combined grand total of that one spoken by the triad of three female American former globetrotting Secretaries of State, the mere mention of whose notorious names, Hilary Clinton, Condoleezza Rice and Madeleine Albright, is absolute monumental proof that women are not morally superior to men!

John Fleming is the author of the book Word Power, available online at Amazon.com.