A poem in the fashion of Wendell Berry

Your big-box stores will be empty someday; as empty as our main-street store- fronts and our bellies at the end of the month.  All you build will decay, it will be an eyesore some day.  You'll die in your SUV.  It protects you from the winos and beggars, but it doesn't protect you from yourself.  Your McMansion will crumble and sway in the wind and "those people" will move in next door; and  you'll find new places to build new monstrosities.  You'll convince yourself that life is better with a five hour commute.  

And you will declare all of this good. Good, like your grades and then your salary.  And then your wife and your kids and your minivan.  Good.  Good like the prisons full of the bad guys, and good like the children of the lazy going to bed hungry after eating their just desserts.  Let them eat cake...d on food particles that your dishwasher can't seem to get clean but your upgrade will fix.  Lock your doors; check them twice .... For they may steal for their children - from the naughty to the nice.  

We decry the Nazis and Soviets because they are past, but our own systems are better and certainly should last - and we ignore our trains running through the night as the bodies pile up. Out of mind, out of sight.  We all agree that we would have stood up for the just, while we steal from those with just enough; one  miserly tip at a time.  

But you will be happier then.  In the piles of rubble where once your house stood, you will find a home.  You will know the names of your children's friends.  You will read a book and go for a walk to escape the chaos and you will find yourself.  Laughter will be your best medicine and God your only refuge.  You will understand why all the poor people didn't need lithium to survive.  You will be free at last, free at last.  Free from yourself.  Free from the things you owned that owned you, too.  Free at last.