The man worked for twenty five years at sales

(from seventeen to forty-three) with five

kids, a mortgage–thirteen hundred–he fails

to pay. Underwater but still alive.

Foodstamps and five hundred per week–insured.

He paid the system all those years and now

he gets thirty more weeks before, unmoored

from house and hope he’ll turn to prayer and vow

to God whatever words He’ll hear outside

the sphere of debt and money, earth’s true god.

Mammon subjects the rich and poor who vied

for power, lied, and cracked NAFTA’s rod,

devalued dollars, manufacture work

abroad, over his back–thirty hour clerk.