Avarice

It was then that I realized
All was not well
I found myself lying on a green hammock
Drowned in a madness of wealth

Fifty-five years I have walked, trampled
Upon this earth
I now hear voices in my head, saying:
‘You shouldn’t lie in that hammock of yours,
For you have been made to toil’

What now of these poor, brown slaves?
If I were to throw them out
And do the labor on my own
To till the land with a hoe,
Not the hoe in the streets,
But a hoe for the soil

But no! I could not get up from my hammock,
For I have grown like an elephant
And developed greed like that of the pope of the olden days.
Toiling won’t do.

So I said to my voice:
‘Screw it; I’m going over to my own god’
And I lay there still,
While my poor brown slaves toiled away, until death took them
And their kids replaced their place as my poor brown slaves.