By Stephen Longfellow Fiske

An infection plagues the land 

a pandemic permeating the pores 

of the human condition

a poison seeping into the heart

hardening the arteries of vision –

A blindness

unable to see outside itself

festering

in a famine of foresight

a blight of beneficence

a calamity of clarity

a cancer of consciousness

metastasizing through repeated histories

encoded in generational identities

ignoring the pleas for generosity

destroying the vestiges of dignity

corrupting the tenets of equality

it feeds the already satiated

gratifies the already ingratiated

bleeds the already bleeding

steals from the desperately needing

serves the already self-serving

denies the despaired and deserving

hardens the crust of the callous

prostitutes the principles of the pious

padding the pockets of power

seizing the profit of the hour

climbing on the backs of the oppressed

enslaved to this disease of the obsessed

a barbiturate of false identity

it seeds the saddest of travesties 

leads to the greatest of poverties

The poverty of the soul…

Greed.