Profiles in Greedage, the Gulp of America

Modern poetry modern verse contemporary poetry contemporary verse modern poem contemporary poem

This monster swims America’s wide sea.

This spermless whale eats smaller creatures, huge

Its intake.  It is uncontrolled and free

To gobble them.  This behemoth, a Scrooge-

like critter, sucking up its prey in chugs,

Takes bribes, emoluments and so on.  Mob

Men, capos, as in Senators and thugs

In Congress, help him swallow in his gob

His lesser prey.  They swim along with him

In hopes of getting bits of flesh and gold

To guzzle, filling corridors with hymn

And praise of him.  They never think to scold.

  Alone among cetaceans he has hair

    Of yellow.  Piggy, wrinkled eyeballs glare.

© Phillip Whidden