THE HOLY ARITHMETIC OF LESS:

Thoughts about Simplicity and Excess

I. Gadget Graves

How many glittering gadgets gleam in our grasp?
Is each sleek machine a mirrored mask?
Do such tools serve a true need,
or are they means for lonely souls to hide
in convoluted digital hives?

What graves await gadgets that no longer shine?
Will they be discarded, then slowly covered with venous vines?
As soil and slime transform their shape:
rust becomes their gospel; dust, their psalm—
they mark evanescence with eerie calm.

Unless we learn a alchemy of turning waste to wonder,
we'll choke on our discarded gadgets
as mercury, antimony, lead, and POPs bond
in micro-kisses, making mortal frames frail
and neuro-skullworks feeble.

II. Imperial Excess

How many sepulchers do aging empires need
til their thrones are filled with noxious weeds?
Haven't we conjured up enough grotesqueries
to satisfy our voracious, verminous vanity?

What fresh abominations are we ready to profess?
Shouldn't we learn the holy arithmetic
of simple living, finding contentment with less?

As our swollen structures tip towards the sea,
bloating in ever dangerous degrees,
we gorge on gold, and glut on gain,
then beg for storms to cleanse stains.

Will some surging stream redeem
our realms from inequity?
What can wash our weariness?

If storms come how will we greet
their swoosh?