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.
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.
Convict Chains
rich man and peasant understand
coins change hand,
despite the Magna Carta
we must all barter
to live –
only communists give
nothing
something
sometimes –
same crimes.
so, when reason rains,
i drag my convict chains
to the barrow bog
and cut peat
in feral fog
where motives meet.
six feet down,
sucked back five thousand years
the old town
settlement appears
in full formation
of chattel,
cattle
and battle
still at station
preserved
to serve.
around
the round
late night fires,
power plays and lust desires
hearth home homogenous
in Mars and Venus
making love in animal skins
wearing the same sins.
on the long walk home,
some alone
and those together,
believe never
can be changed
and are called strange.
The Dance
pull the roof off knock the walls down
touch the forest climb those mountains
and smell the sea again.
watch how life decomposes in death
going back to land to reform and be reborn
as something and someone else.
there’s no great secret to it all.
no need to overthink it through
food and shelter fire and shamans
clothes and coupling used to be enough
with musicians artists and poets
interpreting the dance.
then warriors with armies religions with god
and minds buying and selling
stole the landscape and changed time.
smash the windows break down the doors
melt the keys rub evil words from their spells
and puncture the lungs of their wheels
before they kidnap you from bed
call you dissident hold you without charge
wheel you out on a stretcher from waterboard torture
for years without trial in Guantanamo Bay.
they are selling the sanctuary we made
with our numbers
bringing back chains making some of us slaves
outside the dance in the five coloured rings
making winners and losers
holding flags and flames.