American Dream
Banks pepper us with plastic,
feed our indwelling greed —
we risk our well-being
to barter for glitter,
gorge on obsolescence.
Too many are willing
to forfeit the future,
surrender their power —
it’s just paper, they say —
in exchange for their fix,
allaying the craving
for more, yet more, and more.
—
Poem #11 for NaPoWriMo
This poem is built on the scaffold of Stephen Burt’s After Callimachus. I also found this of interest:
In “After Callimachus (4)” Burt invokes Eudemus, the Greek astronomer and mathematician, who pared back his life in order to avoid debt—which came with mortal penalty. … Burt is taking contemporary America to task (through showing parallels to our esteemed Athenian friends). … In (4) [he] raises his critical hackles by reminding Americans that in another time, debt came with the penalty of death, yet with Americans taking on more and more debt (and the Congress voting to raise the debt ceiling for the government again just this week), Burt is slyly pointing at what Kevin Phillips in his new book American Theocracy calls one of the three most clear and present dangers facing America today, American indebtedness.