The top one-percent of earners
Make $585 K.
The minimum NFL salary
Is $615,000 today.
These 0.95-percenters
Complain about being oppressed
And wonder why their unemployed fans
Are anything less than impressed.
Tag Archives: Wealth
You Have It, But You Choose How
I share with you a secret
That you think cannot be true:
That everything to ever be
Exists solely for you,
That every book and every shell
And every coin and bill
And every star and sunrise
And every sloping hill
Exist as in a melody
From one eternal voice,
That you might seek to claim them
Through your only power: choice.
For if you choose to value wealth
Then wealth you will attain
Through labor, luck, investment,
Or through theft and threat of pain.
Perhaps you value honesty
And see all worldly truth,
Or perhaps you choose your body,
To sustain the light of youth.
But though the universe is yours
You cannot hold a star
For the heat of it would burn you up
(And also, it’s too far).
So too, if wealth should pass you by
Or youth and strength should wane
That too’s the gift of everything
Preventing unseen pain.
So if you wish to value
That which pleases most of all,
Don’t wish for that which others give
(Or to be six feet tall)
But choose to value where you are,
To dream only to be,
And you shall live in paradise
For all eternity.
Filed under Poems
The Two Great Sources Of Human Suffering
The greatest mistakes man has committed
Are deferring their joy to be wealthy
And the not telling a lie when it was discovered
That eating kale was healthy.
Filed under Poems
The Flavor Of “Winning”
For a moment I sat there
With blood on my hands
Smearing life on my white-bread toast
In a room all alone
With inanimate friends
In a halfway house built for a ghost.
My Ferrari was mired
In a 90-hour week
When I needed just 12 to survive
But I’d long since stopped living
For the privilege of being
Among the elite few who can thrive.
The child in the basement
Was calling for daddy
‘Til its fat little throat had gone raw
And yet I was too busy
Helping others to join me
To notice my life had a flaw.
But if I’d payed attention,
Tasted a tomato
Or felt a moth land in my hair,
Just walked outside barefoot
Or put salt in my coffee
I’d realize somehow I still care.
I care about family.
I care about freedom.
I don’t need this bottle and pill.
And maybe that baby
Will say “taste the tomato”
And if I haven’t yet died then I will.
Filed under Poems
Impression: Los Angeles
I stood out here once before
Seeking what could not be found
Head to toe in the neon cloak of midnight
Listening for the absence of a sound.
I saw humans crawl past empty sidewalks
Burning gas and paying fares
On the way to work that will empower them
To buy their surplus worries and cares.
They seek comfort in a glasses, pills, and needles,
Pray for hope through a politician’s lies.
Paychecks promise them the satisfaction
Of being happy in someone else’s eyes.
Red-eye pilots flee this urban heaven
Carrying those with sense enough to flee.
I just read my scripts and idly wonder
What it’s like to see a real tree.
Filed under Poems
Seriously, Look It Up People!
Nixon heard of the Laffer curve
And thought it was a joke.
Reagan heard of the Laffer curve
And said “that’s why we’re broke!”
Obama heard of the Laffer curve
And asked “what did you smoke?”
Trump heard of the Laffer curve
And said “this is bigly woke!”
Most of you heard of the Laffer curve
For the first time just now,
You don’t know what it is
Or how it affects your chow.
So please look up the Laffer curve
So as to be better informed
And we can get to fixing
All the folks who’ve been social-normed.
Filed under Poems
Lady and the Tramp
She was a Sagittarius
Who played a Stradivarius.
I was a Virgo
Who played the trombone.
She spent her days
Reading music and plays
While I played Tetris
Beside my pet stone.
She was a sommelier,
Who perused cassoulet
And to whom piquant tinctures
Were je ne sais quois.
But down by the lake
I jumped out of her cake
And I’m pretty certain
That she noticed moi.
Filed under Poems
And You Can Help By Buying My Books! (For Art’s Sake)
If I make a million dollars
Writing poetry some day
I’ll buy a bunch of bushes
And cut them in a way
That they’re shaped like women
Who don’t like 50 Shades of Grey
Because we all need a bit more
Of those in our lives, eh?
Filed under Poems
Rich People Suck Or Something, But Not Really…
You may be a man of means
Who’s healthy, wealthy, and wise. You
Sure may be a man of means
And if so I must despise you
For if you are a man of means
Your good luck clouds your head
For who would be a man of means
And not a man of nices instead?
Filed under Poems
The Daily Travesty 