Negotiation

the business of work
and love and the facade of tradition
smothering the struggle to be free
making us into machines

I feel it too last night when I turned
a friendship into a business transaction
and all morning I've thought about the return
on investment and creating legal sized

documents with signatures affixed
forgetting the history of love and
the ties that drag us deeper from charted
graphs and equity and opportunity cost

not realizing that of all the ways we are human
the urge to make money is the least of them
the drive to be better is through love
through giving instead of hoarding

instead of living in a cave and counting
the colored feathers and shiny stones
we have gathered guarding from the world
our treasure our inheritance when

we are really just lost