By Al Staggs Originally published in In Mammon We Trust

And we all participate,

by necessity,

in this pursuit of money

to earn our keep,

pay the bills,

to pay taxes

which are gathered

disproportionately from those

who can least afford to pay.

And those tax dollars

are increasingly spent

on instruments of death

rather than on life-saving

measures to aid the needy.

And we live in this

‘free’ nation

refusing to recognize

both the disparity and the destruction

that are the result

of the government-

sanctioned violence

being perpetrated upon us

without weapons.