The Violence of Money

There is never an ending to the spending a world of paper and plastic to collect and horde clothes and cars and homes and jewelry and fine wine and paintings stocks and bonds vacations and expectations entire vocations devoted to disguising the numbers the Caribbean masquerade to volumes of recorded purchases and voices of invoices making discreet choices all to extend the accumulation of dates and names places and faces communications and connections at breakneck speed must fill the need must fill the need a shouting browbeating broadband handing over fistfuls of cash to make sure make certain only the best the finest the rarest of air is not available for the underwater martyrs the silent box dwellers the empty bottle collectors the wheelchair drifters the SRO limbo sellers the workers at the bottom of the fast food chain and the indigent gamblers who line the halls to knock on doors of government departments crippled by reckless and corrupt state administrations choking the dwindling sources and resources that have nothing to do but count the days and ways to disappoint disarm dismay dispute the reputations and applications held in sweaty palms eager to begin living to end the doubt to end the not having the counting of pennies the slow heroin erosion the unbroken hollowness the whiskey-soaked ravages of vacant histories better-forgotten memories of cold emergency rooms to end being in a world apart a world of resentment of fear and hate and anger of dark empty streets empty recriminations empty promises made to themselves by themselves harming themselves or arming themselves to rob to steal to maim to take whatever they can for as long as they can to approximate the wonder and magic of having what you need when you need it or want it to not have to beg to not have to humiliate or be humiliated to not have to watch the ease of others who have a casual contempt for misfortune and respect for nothing but their own wealth of deception to breeze through tall golden doors to an unbroken string of shiny bright todays and tomorrows to not have to lunge for hope and never grasp it in all ways and forever just out of reach