Defenses of Usury

Theme and variations on a reply to Mr. Dalrymple

The bankers who print the currency,
when their ponzi schemes collapse,
will always be made whole
by the people who'd evaded
their snares of easy credit,
who still believed in the morality
of prudence and of probity,
who were naïve to believe
such personal virtues
would hold any sway
in the real world.

Call it punishment for parsimonious dreams,
ones that needed validation
from a world indifferent as stone,
as from an attendant at a parking lot
that was the other day a field,
a cool kid they did not wish to accuse,
he was only doing his job, tending too
uncertain shades of gray --
Alas, they could no longer see
that there is an absolute evil
and a horrible cost in being right.

Better to dream of being fleeced!
The no doc loan, the lottery stub,
the dreams that make one real,
that make us realize, like Antonio
how our lives were never lived
until we gave them up to debt.

-- And so we die broke, happy,
our complicity complete.