Greedification

To start, a true story.

Yes, when people say, this is a true story,

Some useful fabrication ensues, a lie

And if they say “honest, it’s true”

It’s confirmed, standby for a lie

But this little incident is true

True in the sense of sadly true.

On Bank Street, outside the Ritzy bar

A beggar stood meek and mild

His Hand held out for a bit of change

And out came a yuppie drenched in style

Money for a coffee? The beggar’s line

And the smart young man didn’t waste any time

He took his leather wallet out

And pulled a twenty from the stash

Waved in the beggar’s face

Buddy he said, though they were not friends

You and I are pursuing the same thing.

I am just better at it than you.

Greed, alias, in the days when the language was rich,

Avarice or Covetousness

But Greed fits better in the mouth,

A little soft screech of pleasure

Greed, greed.

Greed my friends

I’m talking about greed with a capital G

Oh yes, we’ve got greed, right here in Bytown baby

On the Hill and in the valleys of commerce

On the streets named for Princes and Queens and Landlords

They measured all the deadly sins

The seven seductive cousins

And of course gluttony tipped the scales

Broke them in fact

But greed was the fittest, the strongest

Oh the muscles on greed

And greed came first on race day.

Back in the day, way back in the way back day,

Back to the very day that greed made its debut

When the hairy man in the cave who had enough

Asked for more, and things were never the same again

And the other animals learnt to cross the rift

When they saw the biped equipped with the grasping hands Coming the other way

Searching for more.

More demand, more supply

More and more ways to satisfy

More sex, more meat,

More success, less defeat

More servants, more wives

More babies, more lies

More votes, more alibis

More gods, more gold

More youth, less old

And in the end

somebody gets double

and somebody gets none

Greed is the opposite of enough

Greed starts at home

And a home is where you put stuff

While you go out and purchase some more

Greed is the shortest distance between want and need

Greed is sin Pope Gregory decreed

Feeling the desire for material wealth and gain?

Fill your boots baby

But remember Gregory says

You’ll be thrown in a cauldron of boiling oil in McHell,

Without a paddle,

An eternal French fry, never served.

And so they came to the New World

As they called it in their skewed view

In their Greed ships

Their mission, to transform

Their lead into gold

To subvert the untidy sin of greed into a virtue

To found a country where some men could be very unequal

To raid the earth, to release its riches

For the uncommon profit

To take and not put back

Behind every great fortune

Is a cesspit, is a city dump,

Is a trash mountain.

The Princes of Greed

The Mirthless men of girth

The Knights of the Boardroom Table

Wearing the silken noose of greed around their necks.

Practicing the Blackberry Arts

Being paid to fail

The oxymoronic ones who win even when they lose.

Oh sure, every now and then

They let us have a sacrifice

And the Black Knight falls off his Hollinger horse

And lands in a Florida jail

Doing four to six, baby.

But cut off one head, one CEO,

And a dozen more spring up.

OK, it’s time to play the Ghandi card

Now there was a man

With a heck of a head on his small brown shoulders

A man near the front of the line

In the gallery of moral genius

He had his own seven deadly sins,

The ones most perilous to the spirit of humanity, he said

And one was wealth without work

Read stockbroker, read shareholder,

Read why bother with a conscience

And another was commerce without morality

Read big mining, read big tobacco

And he said Earth provides enough to satisfy every man's need, but not every man's greed.

Phooey to you, Ghandi

Sing the princes of Greed

That sound you can hear

Is us, having the last laugh

And besides, Mahatma, honey,

Who the heck is your tailor?

Money, honey, that’s the stuff

The big M, the greatest of drugs

Pushers in the mail

Pushers in sub-prime time

Pushers in the mall

Pushers in the bank

(It’s a greater crime to own a bank

Than it is to rob one, said Bertold Brecht)

Pushers at the gas station

Pushers in the back rooms

Pushers in the front rooms

Pushers on the TV

Interrupting every five minutes

To tell you to get off that

And get on this

You too can be a prince, a princess

Steal a little, little man and they put you in Sing Sing

Steal a lot, big guy, and they make you king.

So, wait a minute, you say,

Mister witty and astute poet guy

What are you greedy for?

Well, I’m greedy for notoriety

I’m greedy for the past to die

I’m greedy for the future to win

I’m greedy for just a little bit more

But not too much.

I’m greedy for the greedy to leave me alone

I’m greedy for good things to happen.

And that’s a true story. Honest.

And what of us?

Pawns in the Gimme game

Caught in the vice between

The Poet jaw and the addict.

Between soul and asshole.

Greed on one shoulder

Compassion on the other

Well, Greed is the unravelling

Joni Mitchell said.

Pour a little kindness, people

Put that fire out.