POEM FOR PLUTOCRATS

 

one mild day the body walks

past the blue tents full of people

who cannot or refuse to understand

abstractions like money and rights

must be delicately assembled

into great forces no one can see

or even control in order to push

machinery that wants

nothing so without those forces

it will stay implacably still

instead of building a factory or bridge

these people who have now begun

to repeat together words the speaker

without a microphone just said

so everyone in the back can hear

can work in or cross

whatever is must be this way

exactly regardless of who gets crushed

because no alternative will ever

change us we will always be selfish

and now it has begun to rain

the body gets a little warmer

soon it will be in bed

and the doctors in cars

with high end spark plugs or aircraft

held by iridium parts aloft

will rush with infallible compass

and tiny silver containers the size

of grains of rice will be placed

inside the body to hold the terrible

radiation next to whatever

must be eradicated but everyone

will know it is the end some say

is just another country to be ruled

and maybe years from now

young people through a door

below a name everyone

used to know but has now forgotten

in golden letters carved

into a lintel will move

to learn how gentle techniques

for bringing justice to others

and ourselves at last were discovered

by people all of us alive today

are much too old to know