MAMMONISH

He that wants money, means, and content
is without three friends.--William Shakespeare


With a body that’s never been touched,
he swims, melancholy, in a pool of green
over a mosaic of blue sapphires.

He gazes blankly out the window at a black
Bentley that he ships back to London for service
twice a year.

Under a cobalt blue sky, sun fails to warm a marble
Maria Magdalena sitting under a barren money tree.
Salvation depends on prayers whispered from plush purgatory.

In the cinderblock solitude of inhuman silence, he hears
the ululating wail of Gorgons weaving through branches
with buds that will not bloom.

Avarice quarantines you to loneliness, like a winning Lotto ticket.
His hollow heart is empty like a bell without a clapper,
it will never learn to ring.

Milton P. Ehrlich