i owe you me

a poem on common wealth

Belonging to ourselves
and one another has become yet another import from
somewhere far
away;
traveling greater and greater
distances from our own stock of kinship
in an effort to reduce responsibility and obligation
to the soul work that is being asked of us.

We chase paper
and get
caught in time.
We are so depleted,
barely able to lift our heads to see beyond
our own two foot tab.
Accountable only to vapid comfort,
to insular access,
to dominating excess.

Time Is Money! Money Is Energy!
Reclaim your energy and invest it for profit
we hear in shrieks and whispers;
as prophecies and promises
of riches that will
stop
the
clock
so you will finally
be

wealthy enough to exist while retaining value.

Assess each being for their rate of return and
keep a scorecard of every personal interaction as
proof of your market price.
Every relationship is a transaction — an exchange
of goods, and be damn sure to know your worth.
For whatever you invest, ensure that you will
receive more.

Commodify every aspect of your self and soul;
charge
for
every
morsel
of
contact.

Hire someone to do that thing for the person
you love.
Outsource care, for it is too complex and convoluted to
perform yourself.
Enlist an expert to hold that role
for the hearts of humanity.
Raise the gross domestic product of you
in relation to me.

Pay to be empowered.
Pay to be respected.
Pay to feel valued.
Pay to be confident.
Pay to be seen.
Pay to be heard.
Pay to be held.
Pay to be nourished.
Pay for consistency.
Pay for ease.
Pay for healing.
Pay for connection.
Pay for presence.

Earn and expense the privilege of community.
Consume charity from the safety of your living room.
Leverage your property to inflate your ego.
Credit your needs and longings.
Hoard your loss of innocence.

But what if we melted down our coins
of loaned affluence and enslaved avarice
and found at the foundation,
we are solvent?
That the opulence is renewable,
and any debt we owe
can
be
paid
in funding the company we keep
through revolutionary presence,
and in the currency of offering?

Can we orbit abundance through giving
allowance?

The wealth is you — you are a gift.
you are priceless;
you are meant to be
free.

Come on down, for the price is right
to bank on benevolence.
Leave me your will and
I’ll pay it all
forward
spending compound affection
on the quintessence
of being.