Aphelion Issue 292, Volume 28
March 2024
 
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The Con Game

by Richard Tornello


We revile the huckster, the charlatan, and the con artist,
but we honor success most of all.
The rules only matter if you lose,
                                                     and get caught.

Those above-mentioned, highly skilled, understand the game,
understand the human need they fill,
the greed, the hubris, the desperation,
the promised bill of goods.
A taste… a tease… and never delivered.

But hope?
A hope that,
a hope that maybe, just maybe, just m-a-y-b-eeeee?
Oh please!

And what better tutorial?
The one run buy those who promise eternal life, a big daddy in the sky,
with an adult Santa Claus claws clause - the need it fulfills;
blessed by the state in co mythological religious political authority,
promising besides the above mentioned:
hope, harmony and prosperity.
But for who?

And we wonder how it can be done.
We wonder how we can be sold.
Who would buy into something so futile, so bold?
With eyes wide shut
view our latest voyage,
a foray into the sea of power and greed,
met by the ultimate frauds in a house of white,
red ink running in the books? Understood.
And now?


© 2017 Richard Tornello

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