Organic Accounts

An economy is a living organism

The stagnant waters are breeding algae, not lethargic, but desperate

For the oxygen has been strained into a cult of consolidation

Where the nearest star is ever more eclipsed by the height

Of the mounds of wealth sleeping in banks rising like eponymous elephant hills

Bearing lessons for the reluctant orators shuffling subsidized soybean and corn

At drive-through counter conversations via hands-free head-sets

For hygienically paper-wrapped plastic straws stuffed into golden-arch bags

A man owns a hotel

Breaks a bit above-even on-paper

Revenue ten million, expenses nine point ninety-nine million

What has he accomplished?

A gumbo pot starts with the roux

Fire, flour, oil, time

Thickening into the trinity of onions, bell pepper, and celery

Mixed with stock to drench either chicken-Andouille or shrimp-crab-oyster

Okra, cayenne, bay leaves, soaked with the bones and shells

The herbs to the tongue to make a winter’s grip slip into empathetic steam

Rising from bowl into the mouths of a family around a table

Spoons, bellies, and bath before bedtime for school in the morn

Mother to change the sheets of city visitors on convention

Father to drive a taxi

Children bundled up and hoping the fights in the yard don’t get too close

Just want to have a little time for recess before attending to the common core

A man does not build a hotel

Funds on sequester

An investment account for market return percentages

I think I will keep the difference

Open the shores of Mexico and Brazil to the mountains of China and Tennessee

There goes the average labor rate spread across the lowest common denominator

Rice and beans, farms and concrete, Woody Guthrie’s singing about heavy loads

In the dust rolling in stomach’s and okra brought on African produce ships

Productive value paid an official taxable wage to smile at freedom

Fountain pens and hand guns, marijuana and cotton

Foxconn and Fox news; Roger Ailes and hammering nails

Organic vegetables and a world pond

Syphoning off into a bathtub drain at the spa