The Ascent of Money

 

the stars are those

we have forgotten

both living and dead,

floating in clustered constellations

not labouring in rows-

with hair growing grey

and teeth going rotten

singing songs, God's godless pray.

harvesting crops.

chants drowned in clocks

of tobacco and cotton,

the peasants and slaves of civilised nations

duped by liberty

in recent history-

dug out canals, made railways and roads

out of tarmac to tread-

into factories

like tribal junkies

hooked on cheap gin and beer instead

of joining the cholera's watery dead-

ten to a room in a slum and lead-

like human batteries,

sleeping without moonlight

on sarsen stones,

or druid voices in their homes-

where thoughts have no dreams or flight,

just sleep, recharge, get bled.

you have to be poor,

to think utopia

can be something real-

not to exploit or steal

that ambrosia aura of women and children and men

for the spoken wages of despair-

that suck you in,

glad but grim

when times' clock punches that card by the door

and mass myopia

conditions all to labour, keyboard and pen

for food and shelter with a roof and fourth wall

shanty made out of cardboard, wood and tin

in sunny Sao Paolo, where the samba rain leaks in

while orphaned children beg and play

eating the forage of capitalist waste

dodging death squads night and day

imitating Socrates at football to hope to taste

what's inside the cold, glistening towers

casting invisible powers

behind the smoked glass and soldiers of stone

leaving blood and bleached bone

from over there-

where the ascent of money doesn't care

about it all

because its infinity is small.

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The Division Bell

 

they have civilised

the language of hatred

and corruption-

turned it into condensed

subliminal codes

to be absorbed

passively

and aspired to

through elite worship.

 

this softening,

that swims in intercourse

with Oppositions

and Self mandates

it's wars and poverty-

hides the bodies

from presentations

where the Smile and Fist

work together.

 

there is no Division Bell

that Speaks and Moves

with and for

the majority

marching past outside-

like Natives

carrying their bags of belongings,

being screened and moved

from lush lands

early into cemeteries

or onto cattle trains

out to desert Reservations.

 

the Doors

of cold centuries

blow open,

and we see

how Treaties

are still Broken and Abused-

by those we entrust

who have turned

the Globe of Everything

we are meant to Share

into something Bought and Sold

all Right to be Owned and Inherited.

 

most sheep don't Mass for much-

just a patch of grass to graze

and a shack to shag and sleep in-

a few, have their own field

and privately furnished rooms,

but when they all adore

w and k's first tour

on the front page and tv news

for twelve days of conditioning,

or letch and leer over the tits on page three-

the Universal Flaw in Their Rule and Law

makes them troll and bay for this culling of people-

 

until it comes for them. 

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