An Idea Gone Wrong
by Ron Olsen
The green demon moves round and round
Nothing behind it
Just an idea
A medium of exchange
Separating the haves from the have-nots
Moving up and down
Mostly up
Transferred electronically
A whisper in the night
Impressions on a bitstream
X’s and O’s
The transfer of an idea
The impression of wealth changing hands
Happening so fast
You can’t see it coming
Or going
And when it runs out
There is credit
And when the credit runs out
We are done
And there is nothing
From an agreement that cash had value
When in fact, it had none at all
The only value was us
Our faith in one another
Not in Marx or Lenin or Keynesian flow
Or Neocon austerity
The simple truth was our trust
We were the value
The healing heart
Reason
Honesty
Giving power to money
Gone
Only when we abandoned faith in ourselves
And the demon came back
An idea gone wrong
