Tuesday, October 4, 2011

Another day, another vice

This is the day we subsist all rights to a higher power
On the crucifix of confidence
When each citizen is an Iscariot
Following the tune of rehearsed submission
For years - to parents, to stronger men, to a more potent decibel
No Matthew of Levi will clamor to be christened
In the aftershock of due murder
There will only be the profound silence of shame
The silence we express in sentence fragments and
accelerated social interactions
The shock of waking to a bed pooling with sweat
Aromatic of pure, pungent fear;
We'd trample our messiah for Black Friday sales
For a penny saved, all the liberties in the world
Those naturalized items, those beautiful abstractions
Imbued to us at birth, by the sole action of breathing
And interrupting our bastardly communion
We trade our pottage for high-fructose corn syrup
For the dribbling nonsense from Monsanto
For the images of Squanto kneeling, depressed
In the midst of cartoon pilgrims
As cognitive-behavioral anathema: a treat
MK-Ultra, the ultimately unpalatable idea
That all my thoughts were made in china
Competitively priced and shipped to specificity
That the colors of my flag do run, and sometimes
they sprint to the bark of a tyrant's race pistol

When the most charming man on the planet
Runs the most divided government in history
and buffers potshots from Chris Christie
All the people see is a pile of shattered rib-cages
A mountain-top orgy of soothsaying pundits;
And the ENRON-spawned pentagon whistles on
Just four more years, please
Just one more song

1 comment:

  1. My facebook is fucking up, so I can't say this there, so I'll have to embarras you with public praise. This is the single most socially aware piece of writing that I have seen come out of our generation, and captures the moment like nothing else I have ever read. This poem, in keeping with our times, is a combination of the forgotten generation of Hemingway and Fitzgerald and Vietnam-era idealism and opposition. Absolutely incredible. In writing this you have put yourself among the ranks of the greats who looked in the mirror and saw the entire scope of their generation, and that's a pretty exclusive club. If nothing else were written about this generation at this moment, we would still have a complete picture. In conclusion, Thank you. Thank you so much for writing this.

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