who among us has not purloined
the bread, blue with mold  
or fresh with sweet scent?

some have even filched the meat,
the flesh there for the taking,
they rapaciously presume  

who can claim the air they breathe
is theirs, fetid foul or crisp
with white mountain’s bite?    

who is not ripe with prevarications,
necessary fictions to make it through
all these imperfect days?
  
who is innocent of these cryptic crimes?  
yet bars and chains are the bounty
of the chosen ******, the curse
of a wretched few
  
while the rest of us plunder and slaughter  
and blindly wash the blood away
with stolen water