A pyramid’s paramount peak, then bog bottom The vice of success, and the virtue of failure The road to profit, the clamp on poverty The siphon of intervention, jus laissez faire And paradoxically the clan of industrialists Playing in private vaults, tossing lucre Until legislators, god’s sidemen Who looked upon Adam Smith and decided They should succour regulation     Yet Marxist’s reckon Bad behaviour, scurrilous cruelty In factories, mines, the office floor Creates alienation and dilatants And victim’s of erratic markets Capitalism cannot control. Lo a struggling moral system working itself out No coincidence, the rise of sanatoriums Suffering is the pathway to heaven The Protestant work ethic Calvin tells of Work hard, one might have it Infuse the virtues of industry and sacrifice The greater good will benefit, the church first And soon, in all of society, commerce it’s rapture Enigmatic on a purer pedestal The ring of ...

A narrative thought akin to human ideals Liberty and free will Fostering and lubricating exchange Through open trust and honesty Passions confronting their cold other During the transaction Captaining the levers of control To produce growth, therefore wealth Capitalism that is richer for the exchange Win to win, in quick time A disembodied spirit that evolves Speaking through sales, services, and wages And its story is told through strong protagonists Adam Smith, Keynes, Marx, And responsible business owners Who in crisis retain beloved staff And cry over inevitable layoffs Acts rarely written of, the compassion Elevates into myth Conjured like an old receipt in search of its proof The transaction was done, several years hence And like court witnesses sworn to truth it can’t remember Memory didn’t belong to that truth Thus spake the spying derivative to a date stamp seeping ink At 5pm on a Friday When the stock market was closing And ...

There are semblances of him scattered Around in old photos, postcards Half-finished love letters; His excursions are of one whose path Is that of a dirt road Which ends on the edge of a dried lake; His family hopes that He might come back like The rains in storms, And fill the lives of those To whom he matters most, With his love, His kinship, Free from the drugs The alcohol, Free to yawn at their hold, And caress the damage as though the Christ And bind his soul To Oblivion, to begin again.   First published Eureka St April 2019  

There are those, who are living, Aged a few minutes younger than the soil: There are those who are loving Aged a few hours younger than the soil: Those who are lying Aged a few days younger than the soil: And those who are laughing Aged a few months younger than the soil: Some who are killing, some who are weeping, Some who are birthing, Some who are working, Aged various years younger than the soil: And the soil is to claim them for eternity, And they too will be Older than the living, Who are filling the seconds with their life story.   First published Eureka St April 2019

It is the order in chaos, And there is no other, As to this, there is nothing else. It girds all, in this endless universe, And little is known of it, And what happens from sunrise, And from when the sun sets, Is something to learn from in there, As simple as when one speaks with another, As when there is silence, As when something is heard, As when creatures move, As when hurricanes blow. Order is found in chaos, And there is no other, In it there is light and there is darkness, There is happiness and there is woe, All these things Are done in the order of chaos, For life to begin at its entrance.