On Wanting Less

In some of the less respectable circles
I keep my place in, for humility's sake,
I hear of what is known as 'Size queenery';
The praise and worship of those with more
who are bigger and fuller of the things people
say they like. When I hear such talk I smile
-I admire their ability to be so easily pleased,
but I live with a very different reality.

I misspent some my youth attending
different evangelical churches,
places where preachers competed with each other
for extracting more belief from their followers
by shouting how much bigger their God was
than the deities of the other churches.
They never realized that they all used
the same rhetoric, Each disowned the state,
and the law, history, and simple neighbourliness.
All of them depended on the queens shilling.
This was size queenery, christian style,
and like every other version of it
at root it was about never knowing
when it's ambition was going to be punctured.

I have no measure for loyalty,
but it is best when earned
through an attempted consistency
where thought connects to word,
words connect to actions,
and actions lead back to thought,
where the aim is simple solvency.

When we pine for less
we aim for the better.