The Necessary Brevity of Pleasures, Samuel Hazo

Call it a tug-of-war between enough and more than enough, between sufficiency and greed, between the stay-at-homers and globe-trotting see-the-worlders. Like lovers seeking heaven in excess, the hopelessly insatiable forget how passion sharpens appetites that gross indulgence numbs. Result? The haves have not what all the have-nots have since much of having is the need to have.

Poem

Consumerism, Merely Another God! We don’t ask why, we just buy Seduced by yet another lie, Told we need, The subliminal bleed, Spend, spend, spend The madness knows no end, Consumerism, merely another God And still transfixed, onward we plod, Desire and possession, Money the obsession, Man’s maniacal law, The fiscal flaw, And meek, do we genuflect Before the invisible architect, Told what to wear, and what to eat What to buy, the ultimate deceit, And when in debt, spend they say And like mere robots, we obey, Not a murmur, Not a whimper, And still we feed this Monster, And when, I ask, alas and alack, Will we finally take our lives back! Ross DixPeek