Cutpurse And Cutthroat

A pocketful of sharp pens and knives,
each a thing that can end many lives,
but when I ponder which is the best
I take the largest knife to the test—
two or three people may surely die
before I catch the policeman’s eye
whereas a pen can legally kill
MILLIONS with a legislative bill
that seeks to cut taxes for a few
while the poor who make less revenue
slave away at labors ever worse
for the sake of a CEO’s purse,
whether cutting safety at the mills
so the machinery comes off its wheels
and goes falling down, crushing workmen
into puddles of red jam, or when
the concrete mix is not up to snuff
and collapses from the mountain bluff,
or the insulin cost soars so high
it outstrips blood-sugar, by and by.
Look, an ounce of ink, or maybe less,
can make one hell of a bloody mess
and make more money from sacrifice
to Mammon, that god of wealth and vice,
and that is why the coin and the pen
are in the pockets of congressmen
and why a thief with a bloody blade
is not half so bad as thieves “self-made”.

By This Color Divided

The one color that divides
America into “sides”
is not Black or Brown or White,
Red or Yellow, dark or light,
but the color that is Green—
that is the color between
the one side and the other,
between sister and brother;
it is what gives some more rights
while most squawk in petty fights
that accomplish no more than
idle talk, or prayer, can;
it is the power of wealth
that divides all from oneself;
the othering of the bank
and thus the false social rank.
Similarly, it was gold
that was the demon of old—
it was greed that took the lands
from the Native tribal bands
and it was greed that enthralled
peoples from Africa, hauled
to America to build
the dreams of men who so willed
without care of soul or heart
or the lives they tore apart;
nor the migrants near the turn
of the century, yet to learn
that the green of one’s greed
did not care about their need—
though they were just as White
as whom deemed them “parasite”
and used them all as prey
for cheapened labor, and pay,
as like those of modern times:
Latinos from Southern climes,
for Race is just an excuse
to divide us so we lose
the real war of the classes
as one percent amasses
more money, more power,
everyday, hour by hour,
while we raise a wayward fuss
about tribal “them” and “us.”
Divide and conquer, they say,
and it does work, day to day—
the poor so obsessed with hue
while shortchanged for their due.

21st Century Wickermen

A slow fire burns
in the temple of the world
and by the smallest turns
we are roasted as we are twirled
around a workaday spit
for someone else’s meal,
cooked however they see fit
to have their cannibal fill,
for we rarely sacrifice
as we did in days of old
when a virgin would suffice
in the ancient pagan hold—
a throat slit, a heart torn,
the blood of one’s firstborn.

Nowadays it is a subtle price
which the poor must always pay,
an odds and ends sacrifice
on every menial workday,
for life is made of dissected time
and our time is given to others—
to those willing to claw and to climb
up the heaped bodies of their brothers.
A little time sacrificed from a lot
to benefit only the wealthy few;
a little from which is thus bought
the Devil’ intractable due.
“The cost divided among so many
amounts to little,” they say, “if any.”

Yet, instead of notches on bone
we have notches on clocks;
instead of feudal seeds sown
we have dividends and stocks;
because many are slowly killed
in the dead-end, daily grind
to maximize the market yield
for the stockholder hivemind,
which is why the aristocrats
overwork others, and fire some,
just so their bloodline brats
can inherit a bigger kingdom.
The only way to insure your blood
is to make others toil in the mud.

Blood may not stain the chopping block,
but blood does sustain the gears,
lubricating the industrial clock
for machines throughout the years.
Paradise has always come with a cost
even in a world of cornucopias,
and our guilt will never be lost
in these ostensible utopias.
There is a reason the word “fire”
is used when terminating you,
because they are adding you to the pyre
of the unemployed, too.
A pink slip is the pagan mark
to light the wickerman’s spark.