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thymos Sep 2015
the candle
flickering
—everywhere, nothing at all.
thymos Sep 2015
the country isn't poor at all:
the wealth is just hoarded
and goes rotten, and skeletons of industry rust.
the cities are littered with bodies with suits and ties
stepping over them. dangerous speculation leaves behind another gutted home.
the country isn't poor at all:
the wealth is just hoarded
and goes rotten, and skeletons of industry rust.
in all of history, never has the world been richer, never
have individuals been richer, and communities never so barren.
the country isn't poor at all:
the wealth is just hoarded
and goes rotten.

children cry up from the depth of debt for bread and help and shelter
met either with the ideologue's injunction "AUSTERITY."
or deaf ears and tax-payers money
invested in guns and bombs sent abroad, and rhetoric behind the barbed fences of our shores, and the tools for plundering all the people and every corner and resource of the earth and the as yet still fluid future: the tools to cement our early doom.

all that is wretched is integral to the structure:
it is what the system stands on, everything it crushes,
squeezing out the life and stealing it;
we must come to understand this, and step back.
we'll have to face—or be forced to—collapse.

the country isn't poor at all:
the wealth is just hoarded
and people are forsaken, starved, blown up, drowned, deprived of voice and value;
profits are made. life comes at a price, too much for most.
the country isn't poor at all:
the wealth travelled north - taken - into open arms,
those brave, desperate souls in flight who followed
were handed - abandoned - to the waves or absolute destitution.
the country isn't poor at all:
the wealth is just hoarded—
"SAVE THE BANKS, SAVE THE COMPANIES, THEY'RE TOO BIG
TO SINK"—they're titanic—"THERE'S NO TIME TO BE DEMOCRATIC—IT'S A STATE OF EMERGENCY—THEY CANNOT FAIL."
the country isn't poor at all:
the wealth is just hoarded,
hundreds of thousands of houses are empty
and skeletons of industry rust.
the country isn't poor at all:
the wealth is just hoarded,
and so the world goes rotten.

justice will take more than just good deeds:
open the borders and break down the walls!
set no destinations at which to arrive, but towards horizons strive;
we need not firewood, but the seed:
make union and defiance your call!
open the borders and break down the walls!
produce and allocate according to need
and there shall be enough—for us all!

(and i might add: please,
forgive me my youth and naivety...
but i am no believer in the Fall.)
thymos Sep 2015
the raw heat
of your breath on my neck
sends shivers down this spine:
these warping bodies,
spectrums
of dread and ecstasy.
thymos Sep 2015
tree climber:
reaching, reaching
—snap.
thymos Sep 2015
i love the sound of my own shuddering, bellowed
voice
because i so seldom get to hear it.
thymos Sep 2015
no one can bring me down
because i can't get any lower.
at the bottom,
i've found something.
thymos Sep 2015
may i become the rains where the drought persists,
and strength for those who need to resist;
may i become the pole star for those lost at sea,
and shelter for those who need to flee.

may i become a twilight for those who've known only night,
and healing balm and bandages to ease their pain;
may i become a ladder out of their pit and up to new heights,
and may i become a hammer set against their chains.

may my soul become a song
and may its melody become a protest and resistance,
may it find harmony, echo, and resonance,
as struggles go on and on.

oh my body,
may i become
all that others have been for me,
as struggles go on and on.
after Shantideva
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