Have you heard the story about the bum who stumbles into a saloon and begs for a drink, "I'll do anything for a drink!""Yeah," sneers the barkeep, "see that spittoon over there? Drink from that and I'll give you a drink."
The stumble bum grabs the spittoon and starts to drink, his Adams apple bobs as he gulps.
"Hey wait, stop," cries the barkeep, "that was just a joke! Here, I'll pour you a shot of whiskey!"
But bum keeps on drinking and finally puts the spittoon down -- empty...
"Jeeze, guy," said the amazed barkeep, "why didn't you stop? Didn't you hear me say you could have a drink?
"Sure," replied the bum reaching for the whiskey, "but it all came out in one piece!"
This is kind how I feel about the "Arrogant Prophecies" series. Now that I've started, I can't stop -- it's like it all wants to come out in one piece.
In itself, that would be no problem, it's just that the visions of the unknown poet in the Third Galaxy who composed these poems are so starkly dark and twisted. I can't understand how he was able live all his adult with such insights into the spiritus mundi of the time in which he lived. He much have ended up banging his head against the wall in futility.
In any case, "The Edible Garbage Conspiracy" at first seems to be about the degradation of industrial food, however, I believe he is perhaps referring to the food of which the "Holy Idaho" spoke. My reason is that he immediately conflates the "edible garbage" theme with another of his recurring themes -- that we are all responsible in smaller and greater ways for the fate of the world we share in our common humanity.
The Edible Garbage Conspiracy
I went to get me something to eat,___________________________________________
but my appetite diminished when I saw the meat!
The government inspected flesh,
smelled of old pig guts and bad breath.
The food was more than unclean,
it was flavor accentuated, preprocessed protein.
Whoever has to eat the stuff,
needs to hold their nose to keep from throwing up!
But then, I got a steady job
pushing buttons and twisting calibrated knobs.
It was nice, but then I heard a sob...
I looked behind my desk and found a tender blob.
The blob -- it was our Mother Earth.
The sob -- a wail of tears that burst into a curse.
My job was composed of ritual motions
sending dark bombers cruising across distant oceans.
Start with an industrial food industry: where flesh is ground through mechanical abattoirs; dosed with this, that and what not to make it appetizing and even vitamin enriched. Shift the focus quickly from "them" to "us". Things taken down from shelves at the local Warr-Mart are usually not directly harmful to health. However the ugly which procures it is hidden and trivialized with odd tales like that of "Charley the Tuna"
Even the most "innocent job" can be connected with oppression, slavery and atrocities involving us in complicities in which we would fain take part or know about. At the end of the day, that which is destroying the world is the sum of all greed -- a force tectonic in its magnitude.
2 comments:
After seeing Michael Moore’s latest contribution, “Sicko”, I had the reaffirmation of how the average “Joe” in the Unites States of Amnesia, can easily understand what this civilization is about. Simply put, it is about POWER & GREED. When you visualize the corporations as the predators, the politicians as the paid prostitutes, to the corporations and the lobbyists as their paid pimps, your 8th grade history classes can really be cut down to 15 minutes a day. The sad part is accepting the fact, that 1 percent of the power, is what controls this country and we are simply the prey.
Nuke Watcher,
Baltimore, MD.
Nuke, remember, things were much worse in the Third galaxy!
I've heard that "Sicko" is maybe his best production to date -- but if it puts you in a funk, I dunno ;-)
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