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p. m. poems

by adrien rain burke


  1. "Collateral Damage"
  2. The Subject is Trade
  3. Millennial Song
  4. Neo-Liberty




"Collateral Damage"


adrien rain


They're only collateral damage
- the ones we kill and maim and bomb
to punish the unspeakably evil Saddam
(We'd really rather kill Hussein
but assassination has such a bad name.)

We only bomb buidings, we said
our bombs are smart and discreetly select
targets indubitably dead
bricks and mortar,steel and wood
empty cities in a lifeless waste
-warfare in the best of taste
because we are GOOD.

But if regrettably, people should be
in a house or shelter or factory
on which we intellectually drop
a fiery notion or ballisic thought
It's quite accidental, Heaven knows
that they were caught
the Beast Saddam may have put them there
as a decoy or a devilish snare
And it's a pity and a shame
that they all went up in flame.

Oh it's a bitch, Collateral Damage-
a Bankrupt's sorry debt
Uncollectable, and yet
we do heartily regret
that those charred and formless hunks
of human meat and bone
that once were children, moms and dads
with Family Values not so different from our own
and jobs and bank accounts and credit cards
real estate and a cellular phone
will find it so damn difficult, now
to get a loan


The Subject is Trade

The subject is TRADE
- it is not the prisoner working without hope
or the worker imprisoned by despair.
The subject is not the small boy who makes bricks
or knots rugs for fifteen hours, or twenty -
no clocks there (nor schools or doctors, love or hugs)
There is only TRADE: triumphant and free.
Or the little girl, who's not the subject
but the Object of TRADE -
sold for her too-big eyes,
her too-young, too-thin figure
for whom Love and Hugs
are the shackles of a life in TRADE
which is - at long last - Free.

Once, TRADE was hailed as a Deity of Liberation -
perhaps even by the Dissident
Professor, now so weak and ill
from torture and poor rations
in the prison factory
where he crafts bright, mocking flowers
and radios that never send for help
and toys for the blessed children of the USA
- still called Free
(even if they aren't the subject, which is TRADE)
but who suck now the Blood of Slavery
Prey in their games on the traded lives of children
who never get to play
or the mothers in rags,
sewing silk, watching their babies waste away
for TRADE. . .and only TRADE is Free

These American kids, unknowing,
Breathe the poisoned air of unclean cells
Bounce multicolored balls of misery
Play with lead-hearted dolls of prison make
(the very best that Daddy can afford,
now that he's been down-sized
and Mommy's job went South) American kids-
Sanding in the last, blazing rays
of the American Century
Dazzled by the Holy Light of Trade
look unseeing into future darkness -
What waits outside this pool of glare?
a slum? a desert? or just
an ordinary cell?
Or does it matter - since the
Subject, after all, is TRADE. . .

Millennial Song



ONCE UPON A MLLENNIUM
- Two thousand years ago -
As the Republic became an Emporium
And sold out to Big Dough
To distract the cheated populace
Those Emperors long dead
Filled with Bread and Circuses
Democracy's empty head.

How far from such frivolity
America's been led!
In the twilight of our Republic
We get Circuses - no Bread.

Neo-Liberty



The best thing about my country is
that we are free
Free
to watch anything
that's shown on T V
Free to espouse openly
any faith
of Judeo/Christian conformity
Free to call for Greater Freedom
in lands across the sea
Free to question
unseemly excesses of liberty
Free to speak courageously
in praise of the Police
Free to call for tougher laws
More prisons!
More curfews on the street
surveillance,chain gangs,
executions:
Free!
to grovel in the sweet, soft cells of Liberty.

Collateral Damage and Other Poems
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