More reliable than a GPS
If surrounded by plenty
And struck by want
You are in a shop
As goaled to led
Buy that invisible hand
Only wanting
Too pick
Your pockets
You can’t buy happiness — but not for want of trying! Chasing wealth is a perennial favorite for robbing us of our deepest human potential. This poem employs the allusion of alchemists pursuing changing lead to gold; or, in this case, irony, as the reverse is procured (As goaled to led). Money changers gruelingly posit the more-difficult-than-need-be question: you’re money or you’re life? Money changers yen for that pen ultimate exchange rate wile yielding nothing, a part from their life. Money is perhaps the least accurate representation of life, which is given and taken so freely. What a barren prospect that our human evolution is chiefly picking pockets that are madder-of-fact productive or beguilingly reproductive.
This poem is timely amidst the heavily commercialized Christmas season where the human spirit seems entrapped within mass produced stuff rather than flesh and blood. May you find yourself, in good company, wear that most precious, is given freely as received.