The CoOpt

If they can put a face to the movement
They can blacken both it’s eyes

If they can hold its hand
When the photo’s planned
They can frame it how they like

If they fashion us an idol
Then the limelight floods our sight

And they can pose beside the movement
With a cardboard picket line

In a crowd of paper labor dolls
With copy-pasted signs

On a safely guarded soundstage
Of Bezos’s design

Where the Fortunes of 500 CEO’s
have been divined

There now rise words
that curse the movement’s limbs for all of time

That, For all its strength of labor
it will walk with withered step

And will wave a rusting Sabre
as it heaves a laboured breath

As it coughs through all the cancers
born of Bezos’s request

Who’d prefer your starving neighbors
locked in civil war for crumbs he left

But, soon, your cache of crumbs
will mark your slums for violent theft

From those who act directly on behalf
of those with insufficient limb
to lift their hoarders heft

Landlords order mortars sworn to render boarders’ torsos cleft

Now tune that down a quarter-step

Ego, Soul, and Organ Death

Any month that ends in embers
Rot, through every crop, has crept

Nothing fit to eat,
at least there’s lots of JP Morgan Reps

I remember
when we lived on empty promises
through every winter

Now, The grapes of Wrath are plump,
and they are harvested directly
out of Martha’s Vineyard

Where the soil’s awfully rich
and all the fertilizer’s even richer

My pallet’s not chromatically balanced,
It’s a cavalcade of crimson
and it paints a pulsing picture

It is gritty and it’s ugly
It is viscerally stunning

And it ain’t fit for consumption
Like the water in your cistern

Go and ring your Congressman,
and tell that pig it’s his turn

Poverty awaits,
and there’s a seven-dollar wage for him to sit
and watch his mansion full of shit burn

Although he won’t be paid directly;
he will soon receive an email
that’s supposed to have a link,
but, when it finally shows, it’s empty,
so he’ll have to call support
for confirmation that it sent right,
and THEN he’ll get a shortcut
to a poorly-managed website
where he’ll submit a claim
that must be notarized in person
All to finally be denied
Because he made too much the prior year
to qualify for reimbursement

And now he knows the bitter taste
of just a single day
that all our Retail workers face.

He knows the kind of day our Teachers have

The kind of day the janitors
and lab technicians
share with all the nursing staff

The kind of daily struggle
that’s a constant state of fear
for all the working class

The white noise in their heads
that’s born of stress,
and turned to bursting glass

The constant thought
the other shoes about to drop,
the size of half a city block,
that wouldn’t stop for you,
you’re just a worm to smash

You’re just another massacre
they’ll call a clash

You’re just a frozen passenger
before the crash

You’re just another Afghan holding frozen cash

Assets all immobilized by Joseph Biden,
King Of ICE, the self-professed Iconoclast

Hosting dinner parties for his parasitic donors with some Donner Party Party Snacks

Nothing short of Hearty,
if you’ve heart enough,
or lack thereof,
to call it that.

But Who’d have thought the meaning
of the average persons life
Was to work, and sweat, and die
To keep the Blackstone Holdings wallet fat?

Or even worse, that some are turned to chum to serve as Powerbars for bureaucrats

Psychopomp and circumstance

Every time you sign your rights away,
you’ll earn rewards,
and at a hundred thousand points,
you can redeem them for your purpose back

And it’s None the worse for wear
except a heavy coat of surface cracks

Courtesy of those
who chose the path
that dips its toes
into the Jeffrey Epstein Virgin Bath

Courtesy of Congress
and the Persian Gulf Expansion Pack

All our rations held for ransom,
Kept alive on honeyed words
that slowed down all our actions
Til we’re helpless when the ants attack

Stripped to little ribbons
and then scattered to the winds
like the million little secrets
the oppressors shadow hand redacts

The million lives it stamped out in Iraq
until it’s hands were black

machinations sacrosanct,
and cancerous,
and flavor-packed

We’ve got just the blacksite
for your whistleblowers Baker Act

Somewhere in the weeds,
Beyond the pines

Somewhere, oddly,
Google somehow knows just how to find

It’s right there in the file they’ve compiled all this time

With the 7-trillion thoughts that ever came across your mind

And everything that ever turned you on,
Or made you cry

Your truest deepest fear,
and all the shame you sought to hide

The thoughts you dare not speak aloud
Lest they be weaponized

Have been loaded in the chamber,
and they’re aimed between your eyes

Meanwhile, in your cell at home,
they’ll confiscate your blinds
They’ll say you’ve waived your privacy
They’ll show you where you signed

Now You don’t control your thermostat,
It’s locked at 85
And You can’t refuse the dermal graft
That logs you into Prime

You’re just another wretch
they’ll come and fetch
from out the Vermin Camp
to mop some bloody floors
and give a couple boots an oral shine

Oiled roots that move and writhe
beneath a redlined human tide

whose viscous sheen and toxic slime
exists somewhere between a kind
of Diet Coke and Turpentine

The last of us are first in line

The curtain’s up,
we’re streaming live

With censored scripts
and sponsored rights

Subject to changing overnight

On Pepsi’s whim
Or Pfizer’s spite
Or Lockheed Martin’s bomb supply
Or any time we need to breed some fear
to get the stocks to rise

For those who need some distance,
wedged between their public image
And the list of those who’ve visited
the global child concubine

A client list that shall remain nameless
A client list at least a dozen pages
Of honeypotted Politicians
ripened for the knife twist
Once you’re dead,
it’s safe to say
you don’t present a flight risk

Once your lips are sealed for good
There’s zero chance you might slip
And spill the beans
about your recent string of overnight trips
Dropped from heights you can’t achieve without a little nitrous

Down beneath the roots of truth,
tenuous and fibrous

The currency of youth
would seem a tier above the Midas

Christ,
I gagged a little as I wrote
“The Currency Of Youth”
I’ve yet to find the music that hath charm enough to soothe
My eyes are open wide,
And I’m at terms with what I view
Until I shut my eyes at night,
and see it, too.

Phantom limbs of reminiscence
twinging like a sickened witness
twisted in the spinal cringe
the traumatized revisit
every minute
Every statement picked to shreds
before it’s finished
All their dignity diminished
All their liberties relinquished

All your furnaces extinguished

All your means of warmth
are flickering off into the distance
All the ways you know
to make a living growing listless

All your savings spilled
to fill a chalice meant for Pfizer
And they’ll drink it’s vibrant ichor
Like they’ll down a round of blood
from out the last Sumatran Tiger

Light a nice cigar for every man they left to die awaiting trial up in Rikers

Do a line of blow
for every drug offender
turned to lifer

Do another line for every Hybrid Judge
and Agent of the instrumental Prison Profit System that they’ve hired

They’ll wear your movement
like a Mech they get to pilot
Yelling “Hot Labor Summer”
Through a microphone inside it

So all our eyes were elsewhere
when the parties both collided
and they formed a wave of fascism
that somehow dwarfed their sum provided

A danger greater than it’s parts combined

A danger made the greater
when the honest source is buried,
but the narrative is wearing platinum labels saying “Trusted Source”
that cover up its Warning Signs

If you’d have told me all of this
at 40 Sunday Mornings, I
would like to think I’d meet it without disbelief,
but really, might
have struggled just to reckon with it,
grappled just to ratify
And wretched a little bit to glimpse
the bigots that we’ve gratified

Just hit fourteen hundred words,
and, Kid, I’m barely satisfied

I’ve hardly started carving bars
from off this chunk of Malachite
I found, and claimed, and Vandalized

The rest is better left to settle one on one,
just Gates and I

I’ll desecrate his tesseract
I’ll deconstruct his great design
And build upon the very spot
on which it stood to touch the skies

A statue in his image
Wrapped in Tapestry of tannerite
So Bill would get to see himself immortalized
then blown to bits in record time

Blown to scraps of bronze
that he can touch, and hold, and recognize

Face to face
and frozen side by side
immobile Gemini

This must be that ‘Self Reflection’
people had suggested
that, instinctively,
had always felt, to you,
like being patronized

Cause, if we talk, I’m talking down

If I speak, it’s at my feet,
like you were six beneath the ground

I’ll address you where you OUGHT to be,
and not where you stand now

My gaze won’t meet your eyes,
much less your crown.

My praise is not to bathe in,
it’s to drown.

I bet you didn’t know that you could overload an ego to the point of blacking out

And that’s what it’s about

If you can kill a man with kindness
You can smother him with clout

Reverse his engineering
at the hands of hungry crowds

He who bought up all the farmland
and, is casing, now, the clouds

Police will be the farmhands
paid to put us out to pastures
That are shades of gray and brown

I can hear those bastards fast approaching,
screaming fills the town
An occupying army of Abuser, fascist clowns

And some lachrymose millennials intent to vote them out
I laugh for those, and pity those,
who vote with zero doubt

Whose destinies as living ghosts
they’re all embracing, bowed

The cops are inching closer
and they snuff out every sound

And all I had to do was shut my mouth

I’ll let you guess
the tragic end result of Jesse Jett
who tried his best,
but ultimately failed attempts
to hold his tongue

Who couldn’t find the will existing
anywhere within him
to begin to douse the fire
rising up inside his lungs

Born of watching ignorant and educated shits
press impressionable lips
to boots that, just inside a month or two,
will kick them from the bottom rung.

Home is anywhere you lay your head,
once the oppressor’s hung

Soon we’ll cleanse our memories
of the songs that the oppressor sung

And, One by one,
the words will turn to dirt
that cannot hurt you
Cannot infiltrate your movement
Can’t impress upon your Sons

Can’t convince your daughters they’ve no power of their own
No agency beyond the task of keeping up a home
When the last of all the lobbyists
is laid beneath the loam
There will be no profit sewn
in fields of bone

We will only reap the sleep
and stolen wages that we’re owed

And commence The Great Unpaving
of your quarter-mile driveways

Terraforming Tarmacs,
and industrial roads

Paranormal contracts dissipate to mist and disappear amidst the gloam

Disconnect the phone

Fist connects to stone

Somewhere in the thicket
hums to life the buzz of crickets
into one combining drone

But, narrow down your vision,
and you’ll see that every cricket,
is, in fact, a tiny drone

Coming to inform you that you must proceed directly to your designated zone, or you’ll be tazed until you’re prone

Til you’re Pissing blood and whispering
to no one in particular,
just all of the particulates that occupy the air

The only occupants
you share this giant coffin with,
At least you win the Arguments
Cause they’re too busy
hogging all your oxygen to care

Hell, you’re hardly cognizant,
there’s really nothing there.

There’s nothing close to conscious
In your stare

Your eyes look like you’re off in old Oahu
Where you don’t have ANY problems
where you haven’t given thought to
all the aquifers below you
full of fuel enough to launch you
back To when you eyed Hawaii,
And Hawaiians told you NOT to

A little like the Mayans,
Humankind will leave a lot to
deconstruct from what we kept behind
to represent our legacy

Less the stoic temples,
Less the gods resembled,
Less the carven lions standing watch
Above a vine-entangled mezzanine

More the arid soil,
More the sea of oil,
More the mark we leave behind
is best exemplified by finding out
Lake Mead is slightly caffeinated Methamphetamine


Warped and shifted
Torn and twisted
History revisited
The storm that buried Kennedy,
Swept the streets of Medellin

Stirs the strongest synchronized, synthetic, sleeper-cell emotions center mound at Wrigley Field, and harnesses the energy

WE call that ‘Conditioning’

THEY call it ‘Serenity’.

Those who crave obedience.
Will swear they aren’t your enemy.

But LIVE to see us orchestrated
Moving like a centipede

Full consent.

Submissive cadence.

Terms accepted,
Didn’t peek.

Needs neglected.

Couldn’t speak.

Speech affected.
Only leaded fruit to eat.
Only fracking gruel to drink

Two for One on 40-Weight
At Exxon-Mobil Smoothie King

I tried to do the movie thing
I walked away and flicked the match
But never heard the ‘Boom’ to match
Just Boomer waves of Schumercrats

But humor’s futile self defense
Against such brutal facts:

That some will never hear the words
Before they see the ax.

Who’ve never heard ‘Protect & Serve’
and checked behind their backs

And who trust in politicians
Kept alive on purely Duracells & Duramax

A little dash of ritual,
A jug of pharma cocktail,
A Little splash of Burning Man in Nursing Class

So let this be the call
that stirs the hearts
of the emerging class

That churns through the recession’s dirt
to rise, reborn in wall street’s ash

We must shake off the pedagogues
And Pentecost the Plutocrats

And there is no salvation
without doing that.

Now, in the name of clarity,
The Pentecost that I invoke
Is just the part with flaming tongues,
And not the Hope of Holy Host
It’s mostly for the imagery
of all these bloated, greedy folks
Who break our backs,
and snake our taxes,
treated like a weenie roast

And I’d take any bet
that if we let our captors cook
You wouldn’t see a bunch of struggling single parents show with worried looks,
like “Someone help, we NEEDED those!”

“If we don’t have the Plutocrats,
then who will raise the interest
on our student loans?”

“If we don’t have the Plutocrats,
then who will cut the staff
to pay for bonuses
for CEO’s of Senior Homes?”

“Without our noble plutocrats,
then who would gut the budgets
for anything providing education to the public?”

“Who would neuter innovation
that could benefit the nation
cause it wouldn’t turn a profit,
so it wasn’t worth discussing?”

“Without our precious plutocrats,
then who’ll ensure that poverty
took hold of our enlightenment,
and never let us see the Sun,
or ever smell that rain was coming?”

No one’s gonna stop
and if they did,
they’d say “the warmth is nice”
Or “God, the flames are stunning.”

Cause who would miss or pity
all those monuments to nothing?

Those who’ve witnessed cities turned to husks the wealthy drained with but a touch
to pave the way for a development
that’s “easy money”

that never seems to trickle down to someone hungry

Or anyone beyond their inner-circle-jerk
of golfing buddies

And i’m not here for slinging mud,
it’s what you DO,
it’s what you LOVE,
you’re only PIGS,
I do not give a SHIT if you’re a little muddy.

I need to see you destitute,
and see you struggling.

Desperate just to feed yourself a scrap of SOMETHING.

Desperate to the point you take a bite of crow and know a taste that’s truly humbling.

We only can begin
to tear the old foundation down
once we confess, that, yes, it’s crumbling.

And we all know it’s crumbling.

We can see collapse as plain as day
on every corner.
Neath a veil of thin decorum

Like a blueprint overlaid
Made by the economic forum

The Plans they’ve drawn, and quartered.

The graves they’re counting early,
and the million more back-ordered.

I would rather take a stand
than live and die
by their accordance

I would rather see the Forest ONCE
than corpses formed of brick and mortar.

And if the band you’re in
starts playing censored tunes,
then I’ll see you on the dark side of the border.