KS Culbreth

These Thousand Wages, Pointless, Proud, and Brief

These thousand wages, pointless, proud, and brief
clamber for affection, no love-starved child
of a pitiless home,
now painless, now bereft
of all need’s hungers, chills,
the thousand wages, won, lost
to continue the maddening course
is a spoiled child
demanding first, assuming the last
mutant of progress’ cause.

This pathetic interval we call
our time, our life
may be more than a rate of wages;
as the interval unwinds each coil
few hear the demonic laugh
at those many parents proud
of the monstrous child raised,
round, loud, always first
thumpers of the soft fist’s pound
deifying ragers of the thousand wages
reifying greed’s inbred stages.