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Neue Ordnung | Poem

 
 

Neue Ordnung *
 
As the stock market rises and 
the sweat from maquilladoras drips to the 
rhythm of pounding machines, 
smiling investors swill champagne 
fermented from blood-sucked workers 
while mirrored walls smile multiply 
over the vanished bodies. 

As workers fall, 
shot from the guns of finance 
to unemployed offices 
where contractors gather to underbid 
the still-unwithered scabs before 
dust from their shuffling 
footsteps blows to the south and 
the stock market rises. 

As the stock market rises and 
the pulse 
of the nation throbs weakly, 
doctors and nurses trade stats 
culled from daily tabloids and 
nightly tabloids and midday tabloids 
belched from the mouths of pollsters 
curried by doctors and nurses 
while the 
body of the state recoils and 
the stock market rises. 

As the stock market rises and 
the mountebanks mounted on tramps 
fart backwards to the crowds gathered eagerly 
for the latest news of prosperity, 
bank accounts pulse weakly 
under the onslaught of doctors and 
nurses trotting forward to attend 
the sweet, rotting body of the state. 

As the stock market rises 
and the Great Nanny trundles the 
limousines and country clubs 
to conventions where 
the masked bandit of Uncle Sam 
ringed by walls of policeman and stone 
and rifles and bullets 
smiles and the Head Goat smirks 
to the furious crowds outside. 

As the stock market rises and 
the falling bodies of Russia Africa France 
roll to the ditch where countries too small 
to concern the doctors and nurses taking 
dictation from the tabloids farting backwards 
from the body of the state 
rot conventionally onward like 
patients no longer haunted by the ghost 
of John Maynard Keynes 
sold at auction long ago 
since slavery is more marketable than ever 
as the stock market rises. 
 

- Paul Kesler


* editor's note: "Neue Ordnung" is German for "New Order." This is also a kind of shorthand for "New World Order," which is what the Nazis originally called their plan to conquer the nations.

More recently, the phrase has been adopted by global financiers, who (through their emissaries in the media) have used it as an innocent-sounding synonym for imperialistic capitalism.


to Paul  /  to Moongate
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