they built a new cathedral of glass and steel,
where the ticker-tape hymns made the future feel
so inevitable,
a logical end,
where the market alone was the truest friend.
its laws were presented as natural,
pure,
a system no person could ever secure.
a god that demanded a sacrifice
of community,
sold at a price.

high in the penthouse,
the architects praised
the elegant numbers,
the indexes raised.
they spoke of efficiency,
freedom, and growth,
insulated from the raw truth down below.
the quarterly reports,
like stained glass,
glowed warm,
obscuring the shape of the gathering storm.
they toasted to progress,
they never once heard
the weight of a single,
un-moored,
bitter word.

but down in the streets,
where the futures were pawned,
the human collateral struggled and dawned
a colder reality,
hollowed and thin,
where the cost of their winning was buried within.
the truth was externalized,
shoved out of sight,
the shuttered-up factories,
the long, endless night,
the rust that was blooming on reason and trust,
the inevitable,
logical,
cruel adjust.

the final contrast is not rich versus poor,
but the cold, abstract market against the heart's core.
it's the value of portfolios,
soaring and vast,
against the value of a future that's passed.
it is the few,
feeding the wolf they designed,
believing its hunger is somehow aligned
with their own fragile peace,
a most fatal conceit,
as it turns, bares its teeth,
and begins to eat its own.
the move is absolute.