20151213 (new ethics)

As someone enamored of

Monastic life I don’t think

I qualify to tell you how much

Is too much but if you’ve

Read this far you may care

To hear me out perhaps it’s

My excess that I get to watch

YouTubes at will in my old age

Not that my years call it that

So much as my body when 

Pushed but lately I’ve seen

Things that distress me about

Wealth gold-plated cars water

Tinged with gold fleck at

Hundreds a gulp I like gold

As much as the next guy

Heavens it enables my 

Computer to show me these

Sins promptly and without

Delay one can scroll all day

Through the vaunted property of

The rich yachts long as battleships

Three hundred classic car collections

Houses on islands seven story

Glass penthouses how much does

One need it’s a first-order question

Of today’s ethics one colleague of 

Mine asks if it’s too much that

We each have washers and dryers

If not each truly each family

When for a good share of the 

Week they sit unused she should

Meet my daughter-in-law who

Seems to keep hers going day

And night but she has three 

Youngsters who go through

Clothes as if they were kleenex

Back to gold gold fixtures in

Marble baths when two point

Four billion of us poop in a 

Trench use water tinged with

Fecal matter for cooking for

Some to have silk stockings

Might seem alright if everyone

Else had socks if they’d need 

Them most of us clued-in know

It would be better for all to cut

Back well-insulated rooms no

Larger than ten by twelve electric

Cars rented only for the time of

Travel then returned to the pool

At the destination what’s the 

Sense of building new houses

We’ve got old ones to repurpose 

Economy versus ecology 

Yacht builders lose their jobs 

Artists in gold plumbing 

Reduced to begging alongside

The publishers of  The Robb

Report Town and Country

So many in Somalia can

Stop making their family’s millet

Pancakes by burning all sorts of

Animal dung the Industrial

Revolution’s proven a two-edged

Sword made us rich beyond measure

Takes us now to self-imposed poverty 

Lest we all perish from starvation 

Or in the wars for what’s left

c. J.S.Manista, 2015