Standing Against the Oligarchy...a Story and a Reality

This poem is from my book, Spirit Walk: Journey of a Soul Embodied, 2013.
I republish it here to honor all those who now stand against the coup.

There once was a man…

  Mind you, I mean it literally, a man.

  As we all know, women are not running the world

  so play a supporting role in this story, not the lead.

Anyway, there was a man.

This man suffered the fortune of being born

  into extravagant wealth.

  For that accident of birth, 

  we can bear him no malice.

Through his youth,

  he did not experience hunger nor thirst,

  nor, in fact, need of any kind.

Of course, he had many wants,

  boats, toys, more variety of boats and toys,

  unlimited oil for his boats and toys…

But, somewhere along the line,

  he lost the capacity ability to discern between want and need.

  Or, perhaps he never learned the difference

  in the first place,

  having never actually experienced need.

In his youth, this man was strong and virile,

  spawning children who, as he, knew not of need,

  but who, also as he, suffered from insatiable want.

But, forgive me.

  I have not given you the name of this man and his family.

  We shall call him Ubank Sovereign, 

  Ubank for short.

  His family name is Plutocs.  The family is

  the U.S. Oligarchy.

Together, this family celebrated their good fortune,

  new wealth,

  new power,

  new toys.

So many reasons to celebrate.

  And celebrate they did,

  with feasts of such variety and enormity

  that there was always extra to be discarded.

And as the Ubanks before him,

  Ubank combined strategy, wile and cunning

  with his enormous wealth

  to accumulate yet more wealth.

This, after all, is the US Oligarchy family dream,

  to accumulate wealth…

  all of it.

To his great delight, wealth generation came easily,

  for, as we all know, you can’t generate wealth

  without first having wealth,

  wealth defined as income above and beyond

  that required for sustenance.

And, as he already owned the lion’s share of the wealth,

  well, quite frankly, 

  it was (like) stealing food from a baby.

Of course, he made contributions to earn

  these immense rewards.

To his credit we now have ‘forced obsolescence’,

  and a ‘throw away economy’,

  not to mention a thriving industry of waste removal,

  and yes, waste storage, what with vast rivers 

  flowing downstream from his penthouse,

  and the oceans and sky at his behest,

  or should I say disposal?

But, his greatest accomplishment

  was the vast network of friendships

  he developed in a burg called Washing town.

As required of any good relationship,

  he and his friends shared with each other

  in compassionate and enduring camaraderie.

  Nothing could break this (iron) triangle of friends.

Now, a few things happened in the course of Ubank's life

  that disturbed his otherwise unmitigated pleasure-taking,

  (or rent-seeking, which ever term suits you)

  and proved a lifelong nuisance.

‘What were these annoyances?’ you ask.

Well, first it was appropriating resources to feed

  his family’s gluttonous appetites.

  With his enormous wealth,

  he built ships of the sea and sky,

  and sailed to appropriate those 

  resources from heathens around the globe.

His good and abiding friends in that burg, 

  Washing town, lent their assistance to this noble cause

  through agreements with Musk, Zuckerberg, Bezos 

  and other Ubanks around the world.

But, what irritated him the most was the pervasive whining 

  of the unwanted rabble gathered on his front steps.

  So he developed brilliant, well-funded strategies

  to contend with the whining masses.

‘Manifest destiny’ moved many off his doorstep 

  and located them where he could no longer 

  be bothered by their inexorable whining.

Anointing avarice

  with moral and constitutional legitimacy

  busied the many who believed they, too,

  could live as did he.

Yet, all his sleepless nights and devoted work

  could not quiet the drone of the whining masses.

  Worse, the whining rose not just from his stoop,

  but increasingly from all corners of the world.

And out of the cacophony of riotous whining,

  there arose a voice,

  a voice that could be silenced neither 

  with the pen of his Washing town friends,

  nor with the arms that generated much of his wealth.

The voice shouted,   ‘No more!’

  ‘No more shall you pillage the poor and defenseless!’

  No more shall you steal the birthright of every human

    to food and water and a livelihood and safety!

  No more shall your vile lies, depraved self glorification

    and profligacy feed on the human spirit and

    desecrate her mother Gaia!’

'No more!' say the people of the United States in 2025

We are standing up…NOW.

The birthright of all human beings

  food, water, a livelihood, freedom, safety,

  a world abundant in life and rich in blessings -

  the birthright of ALL human beings.

  NOW.