“…a comprehensive analysis of the global financial crisis of
2008...at a cost over
$20 trillion…”—ad copy for the movie Inside Job
My guess is
"pockets." Many lovely cashmere coat pockets, many Ferrari side
pockets, many pockets of many already millionaires and a few billionaires, lots
of Congressional pockets. Nothing for pockets of despair, job-loss empty
pockets, pockets of disease, depression, hunger, homelessness.
The pockets of the newly
rich have no eyes; they don't see the pockets of anguish or the gap now so wide
between rich and poor that it can never be leaped, even by the strongest
jumpers.
The pockets of the old
wealthy have a dim vision and see the need for giving. So they support the
opera, the symphony, the art gallery, perhaps the March of Dimes.
The pockets of the poor are empty. Their eyes are
wide open. They know by heart that the catalog of necessities for life—food,
clothing, and shelter, as every fourth-grade geography book defines them—is a
matter of truth, for without them one can only hope for one thing: survival,
survival, survival…and hope grows thin, the way old clothes do, and so does the
soup.
And so do the children
With an apology for
generalizations, which do not tell the whole story
Photograph, “Impending
Storm,” by Luna Zeffer
Oh yes, and this story is told in detail in the straightforward manner of a Power Point presentation in that film, "Inside Job". Did you just see it? If not, the Healdsburg Peace Project is showing it at the Senior Center this Thursday night. I'll send you the link. x0 N2
ReplyDeleteI like the way the narrator personifies the pockets. They have eyes that see what they need, or maybe only what they want.
ReplyDeleteOf course my school years
ReplyDeleteGave me no view of extremes. Not
Reading from the kinds of books we got--
Required texts outdated and musky with age.
But travel filled in the gaps for me.
No. Showed me the gaps with my own eyes--
Undeniably high percentage of poverty
Juxtaposed against those tiny pinnacles of wealth.
Philippine poor serve the rich.
Wages get sent home
To cardboard-box slums for food.
China’s coasts roil in riches.
But inland the provinces’ poor
Barely earn a share to eat.
Asia’s angry lower caste
Work and wait their chance
To rape their wealthy kinsmen.
And my gut feeling was that it wouldn’t be long
Before the gaping hole between rich and poor
Climbed our shore and made itself at home,
Settling in as though it had always been there.
The State’s middle class, it’s been long predicted,
Would vanish without a trace, but not before
Leaving a trail of hysteria turned despair.
And we’re there. It did all that and more.
That’s the core of what your ‘pockets’ provoked in me.
A friend wrote all about it before it ever began.
He titled it ‘Baroque Tomorrow.’ Meaning?
It will all come down to stones and shells.
Rococo. No more symmetry. Only lop-sided
Frivolous, gaudy, modish ornaments for the few.
While the rest starve on plain gruel.
Thank you for such a challenging response, sister of mine in Australia! Much to think about.
ReplyDeleteI like this one.
ReplyDelete