3 poems following Jim Kunstler's latest Cassandra-like missive are the most chilling verses I've heard in a long time... maybe EVER
As a holiday bonus to readers I attach three splendid poems from the excellent Missouri poet Louis Daniel Brodsky:Dubai WorldDubai World,Fronted by the oil-inebriated United Arab Emirates,A confederation of trickle-down-economics sheik-down artists,Who put all their Western Easter eggs in leaky baskets:A ski "mountain" moved into an indoor resort,A beach cooled by under-the-sand, refrigerated pipe work,Golf courses drenched, hourly, with desalinated ocean water,Man-made islands kneaded into a vast palm-leaf arrayAnd a map of Earth's landmasses --A surreal Xanadu out-Las Vegasing Las Vegas,A dizzying Disney World Shangri-la of mother's milk and money,A Bahamian Paradise Island Atlantis resurrected from silica . . .Dubious World,Drowning in an oasis of debt, hoping to cross the Red-Ink SeaBefore the parted waters close, squeeze it dry._________Tinker's DamnTo this gnawingly aggravating second,I find my mind at a depleted loss for reasonable explanations --Some . . . a few . . . one -- as to why my country,The increasingly disunited United States of America,Has lost all sight of its painful degradation,Those principles laid in place, by patriots and patriarchs,That once formulated the basis of our nationalistic natureAs a tribe of diverse, hardscrabble-ambitious peoplesHewing to the well-being of a vibrant identity.I'm left only with questions orphaned of answers,Enigmas in search of exits from their dazing mazes,Unjustified justifications for our gross injusticesToward others as well as our hubris-doomed selves.Who mandated that America play God to the planet,Nation-build corruption, globalize itself out of jobs,Allow plastic food stamps to substitute for legal tender,Foreclose on tepees, tents, log cabins, McMansionsPurchased, for an ARM and a leg pull, from greedy lenders,Even as their owners seek shelter in doorways, storm drains,As, once, the hopeful huddled masses did,On first swarming our golden Ellis Island shores?Ultimately, I don't have a tinker's-damn choiceOf accepting anything but our inexorable Manifest DecrepitudeAs the just fruits of our labors in the fields of anomie,The factories of hypocrisy, the casinos of high finance,The brothels of materialistic adultery,The toilets of grandiose delusion -- the American Dream.________Chinese Fire DrillWhat a strange, bewildering, terrifying time it is,Here in America World,To find it the foreclosed home of the brave homeless,Who, as recently as today, this Black Friday,Have borne witness to Dubai World's humiliating bankruptcy,A revelation capable of taking down entire far-flung nations --An insult to our already systemically weakened body politic,Disemboweled by un-Orthodox Wall Street bonus-baby boomersBringing home (sleet, snow, shine, Shabbat) the bacon . . .Who, just this inordinately hyped Day of the Colossal Sales,Are salivating, like Pavlovian Dobermans,To unleash their well-conditioned shop-till-you-drop skills,Just as they've done for the past fifty postwar years,Like good little followers of Nazi Germany's Oberster Kommandant,Who exhorted his fellow followers to follow orders,In nothing more than nothing less than orderly Aryan fellowship,Even as they drove themselves, like lemmings, buffaloes,Over the precipice, into infamy's abyss of hyperinflation,Which is precisely where we prodigal Americans are headed,As, day by day, we outsource our Levi's, flags, apple pies, moms,Mortgage our subprime-ARM souls to Goldman Sachs Fifth Avenue,In exchange for McMansions, Harley-Davidson hogs,Bombardier snowmobiles, Madoff's Rolexes and Patek Philippes,Purchased on disappearing red-white-and-blue-ink credit.And here we are, the day after Thanksgiving,Digging deep into the shifting sand dunes of our shallow pockets,Trying to reach China, as we did as kids, at the seashore,To persuade those quasi-communistic-capitalistic powers that beThat America is yet a viable investment for their future,When our, as well as their, Harvard-trained chief economistsDamn well know that it amounts to a Chinese fire drill, if that,For them to continue accumulating Treasury notes,Which, any day now, won't buy five grains of Dubai World sand.
via kunstler.com
