Who decided that gold is the standard?
Why do we think it is so valuable?
A shiny metal. Can we eat it? Yet we bombard
Humankind with unkind mined metal unable
To nourish spirit or body or soul or even mind -
But greed needs a rampart for greed is blind
And money is the mockery of the honest grind.

Silver and gold have brought sorrow untold
To the timid and the bold, the young and the old,
Warm-blooded and cold-hearted who all departed
Without a dust of gold from the path they started
Upon, seeking value in materialism’s charms
And losing their value in materialism’s arms’
Creeping stranglehold that grins and harms.

Che Chidi Chukwumerije
Poems from the inner river