Two Poems: The Briefing and Will Justice Come

THE BRIEFING

You are new here and have been given the keys.

I’ve been asked to lay out the big picture

Of how the world works – from our point of view

Without the feel good bullshit.

You are being paid too much to need that.

First, understand that it is all related

And it’s accelerating at historical hyperspeed

Driven by global finance capital (that’s us)

Money moving in milliseconds

Chasing growth to keep ahead of

Falling demand

Brought on by the global race to the bottom in wages

And then the race to replace even low wages with robots

The wealth gap ever concentrating the goodies at the top

While humanless factories

Or Bangladeshi girls behind sewing machines in those death traps

Pump out more and more stuff which fewer and fewer can afford to buy,

Or even need—or even can be induced to want

While we and every other company whips its managers at every level to cut costs

To beat the quarterly projections.

Do a little greenscamming if it sells, but for God’s sake why risk spending money

Cutting emissions or pollutions when the competition doesn’t.

Besides, just buying politicians and regulators who will

Cut those burdensome regulations

Is a so much better investment.

Keep ‘em scared of terrorism

At least plots foiled at the last minute that we can’t tell you about

Military and security high tech hardware is almost pure profit

And is made obsolete before it is out the door by the next thing they build

Billion dollar human flyswatters – and splat

Some radical wedding party in East Whocareswhereastan

Is hot mush—and so it pisses off the locals–

More targets, more drones to sell

And NSA, such a beautiful off-the-books customer, searches the twitter feeds

For all suspect patterns that link bombs or suicide to love to any critical word which correlates

With poetry, English major, and democracy—so that every mother’s son

Has a current threat number and a set of tracking coordinates

And the hard drives house gigabytes of blackmail material and credit card numbers to

Bring anyone around with one little visit—if they are even worth a visit,

Because who needs spies and informers

When they have a catalog of pretexts and detention facilities for any situation

If Fox and Rush and all the little Rushites don’t quite succeed in keeping

Their eyes off the ball.

Trust me. This shit works

And you need to fully understand that new weather, or climate, if you prefer, is a cornucopia of investment opportunities:

Arctic oil, Canadian forests cleared for soybeans,

Hell man, sure the storms and fires and droughts are impressive but we have great backup generators, great pumps, and besides

Climate change is just the kind of creative destruction

that makes capitalism keep ticking.

I mean, What’s not to like?

Conscience is for suckers.

Single malt scotch and a little blow

Cleans any still left in your system

Right out.