Everybody has a price

Money. Its all about money, have it, want more, money makes money. You're nothing without money. Duddy Kravitz can have his land; we want money. Instead of focusing on excelling at something one enjoys, you're hassled, harassed, and constantly told to make money - lots of it - for the sake of personal and familial reputation. Actually personal reputation matters little; familial reputation trumps all else. How do you measure up to Mr. X's son or Ms. Y's daughter or X cousin or Y's niece. Man is the measure of all things. No, that is incomplete. Man is measured by money, wealth, cash and what and who he can buy with it. Money is the only measure. Forget art. Forget love. Forget passion and forget fulfillment. Forget social conscience, ethics, environment - hell, fuck the future, money can ensure your own and isn't that the only concern?

Don't sit down and read. Reading can't make you money. Making money makes you money. Don't think. Thinking doesn't make you money. Making money makes you money. Don't speak. Speaking don't make you money. Making money makes you money. All things that makes you money are good. All things that don't, bad. Simple enough eh? This new ethos, these now eternal rules are simple: fuck everyone else, what's in it for me and my people, my crew, my family, and my bitches? Gangsters, oligarchs, tyrants, and corporate superstars are cut from the same cloth - its of vile pale green shade. Money makes the world go round...round and round we go, where will it stop, nobody knows. It will assuredly stop with a whimper and a cry, "Oh my, money so much of it, with nothing to buy, nothing to eat, no one to exploit, and nothing to own."

Finicky Machine

The machine speaks.

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The machine tells me to forget it.

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Imperfect, its needs energy - entropy, dancing entropy encircles him, seated, sedentary, and soothed by mechanical glow. Decayed, sapped, he who is seated knows little else than a familiar radiance.

The machine speaks.

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surrender

Nov 5/07 @;#) AM

Nov 5/07 @;#) AM

Under a grey languorous sky, I looked at the body, specifically, the face with his lecherous smile still in place. He looked ferocious, even in death; evil dripped from every fang. And it dawned on me. One day, he would rise from the tomb and seek retribution. I started digging towards six feet. Six feet is the great equalizer. We may begin from different points - rich or poor, blessed with infinite talent or helplessly incompetent, but end up all the same: staring up at six feet of dirt. Well, six feet of dirt, if you're lucky. You might see it differently: being consumed in an incinerator or sinking to the bottom of the sea or dangling from a sturdy tree or hanging unceremoniously from a crucifix. Six feet, if you're lucky.

Stunted

Stunted, sustained regression, invariable decline, spiral, spiralling away, without flow.

Can’t fire. Synapses lie dormant. Flow is elsewhere. Erroneous thoughts, curse these erroneous thoughts. There’s no string…no connection…without chains in solidarity. Too much rest, I can’t stand sleep, dread of slumber, lumbering through slumber, drowsy, groggy, too well attached to reality, too conscious, that reality fades with each passing wink.

Deprivation, keep slumber from me…no more, to close my eyes no more…open and the world is flat again, the trees speak, the ground rumbles and roars…

Working in darkness, aroused by the cool seductive touch of night, I write…much of it is unmitigated rubbish, unworthy of either paper or ink, much of it simple uninteresting confession, complaints of the most banal kind…

I am or can be only in the act alone, can only become in words, undone by deeds…

Undone…distraction, intrusion, interrupted flow…

Left alone, festering wounds whistle a sonorous tune, an abysmal anthem, a serenade to nothing…a invocation for the grim and inescapable…