by Bill Costley
Wayback in the quick-rising ‘60s
‘voluntary poverty’ arose
within the disaffected 1st-world's
middle-class: suddenly its children
‘went back to the land’ to escape
parents’ plush suburban homes
for a ‘conscious’ anti-consumerist,
‘natural’ pre-'50s lifestyle.
A half-century later it’s merged
with the whole foods movement,
irrelevant to any known poverty,
its ‘perfectly priced’ mantra an insult
to the world's starving. Admit that
neo-consumerism’s co-opted it;
re-break the consumerist mold.
Declare ‘adequacy’ universal,
‘enough’ everyone's need.
Bill Costley serves on the Steering Committee of the San Francisco chapter of the National Writers Union.
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