Author’s Note 2024: I wrote this poem in a tea break during the Iron John Workshop with Robert Bly. Click here for my story about my experiences of that workshop. The poem was a result of my frustration triggered by Robert asking the participants to purchase his book on Amazon. 

 

I’m the mighty Amazon, just look at me
Buy any 2 products and we give you one free.
Forget about people or even a smile
Just click on the button and download the file.

Books as commodities, guns, tits and sleaze
Music to fill silence – give me 10 CDs please.
Culture and knowledge, they’re yesterday’s things
Just swipe the plastic – what pleasure it brings.

High streets lay bare, the small shops have gone
Saving a few pence on the latest hit song.
Safe in our rooms with the flickering screen
Isolation is the price of the e-commerce dream.

Cheap, efficient and logic now rule, it is clear
But the cost, to the soil, is the one that I fear.
Such a world of plenty for only a few
Colonials to corporations, dear men what is new.

David Hoyle
Gathering of Men
Findhorn 2001