Recorded live and on site right outside Utah Lake State Park, which means that there are also airplanes flying and birds chirping and other people walking. I have edited out the other people walking, but the rest of it is all here.

[Mark Gibbons](https://gibbonspoetry.com/) is the Montana Poet Laureate for 2021-2023, and I hope he doesn't mind that I used this poem...

#### TEXT OF POEM

"My Life as a Capitalist" by Mark Gibbons

My Life as a Capitalist

has been an abject failure.

As evidence consider the living

room of this rental I've lived in

for the last twenty years:

this chair I sit in and the area rug

beneath me were gifted by our friends,

Bob & Sheryl; the two wooden tables

holding second hand lamps

and donated plants belonged to

our grandmothers; the hide-a-bed

sofa I inherited from my mom

along with the TV trays

we use for end tables; another

straight-backed chair and the handmade

entertainment center I picked up

at my old job as a furniture mover

where I found the legless entryway

table my brother rebuilt for me;

our used Samsung flat screen TV

was shipped to us by friends in Alaska;

the boom-box was donated by my buddy

Burt to fill the silence of the departed

one. The art on the walls? Given to us.

The only thing in this room we purchased

brand new is the (now shredded) cat tree

which has evolved into a scratched post-

modern work of frayed-fiber art.

If everyone in America lived like me,

there would be no "throw away" society/

economy. And now that we find ourselves

crowding the end of the line, to consider that

this is all we have, our accumulated wealth,

seems comical (in the way that everything

has seemed comical to me, the absurdity

of this material trip). It almost appears as if

it were a focused effort to have bought

so little and scrounged so much. Honestly

I just didn't pay attention, and obviously

I don't care—never did. So this is

the inevitable result—what's left of

the hand-me-down kid: one angel

on the right moans, embarrassed,

holding and shaking its head while

the little devil on the left sorts through

a pile of freebies from the recently dead.

You can find this poem in Gibbons's book, which [you can buy signed by the author](https://www.factandfictionbooks.com/weeds-signed) at Missoula's best independent bookstore, Fact & Fiction.