Anger and Angst: Annotated

I. Logos¹

Eyes glazed by a blizzard of WoW²

ignore the burning crusade³ of nights

questing for the holy grail of cataclysm⁴.

Turning to listen, but eyes never leaving,

they wonder: why the angina of anger and angst:

can there be no happy endings?

To understand the pain, desensitize, deprogram,

and enter the puzzle palace of pattern recognition⁵—

a place where most are blind or deaf:

advantage the one-eyed man with signing savvy⁶.

Watch the movie in slow motion, frame by frame,

see the subtle sublimation of subornation

destroy the golden good the goose gifted to those

who came before—and left to us for careful tending.

A garden to nurture and grow for generations,

allowed to fallow and favor a world of weeds,

hidden within the nourishment of daily deeds—

stop the frame: savour the sediment in the syrup⁷.

Women and children in a world of want

ask in vain why a world of war

crafts and creates missiles that cruise

on fuel from food⁸ that could feed those in need.

The answer, my friends, is the absence of anger,

abstinence resulting from the planned propaganda

that idled the machinery of change, locked the gears

of growth, froze the futures of the free, all under cover

of fog from the myth that you, too, can be there,

sitting with the self-hanged gods, the boss hogs that

championed Adam Smith⁹ over Karl Marx¹⁰, cheering

from the ring-side seats of power and control

over me and you.

II. Chaos¹¹

War's evolution begins in the ashes of civil war:

northern factories industrial might created profitable

visions of gains from drum and fife and strife.

Rising like a phoenix, war continues to roll across the world,

merging the power of generals with the power of capital

to create weapons with the power to destroy Gaia¹².

“Now, I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds,”

says the Bhagavad Gītā, and quoted by the father at Trinity¹³,

turning war into the religious experience many wanted.

Winds of war, driven by consumptive capitalism,

fan flames of chaos across the world,

shock and awe, creating a perfect storm,

blowing its clouds into Indochina, Korea, Vietnam,

Lebanon, Cuba, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Yemen, wherever.

War necessary to save us, save the region, save the world,

from the writings of Marx, Lenin, bin Laden, whoever,

that foment revolution, revolution against...what?

(ever wonder why only one revolution was legitimate?)

But wars could be stopped, think Vietnam,

—here's to the war in Vietnam!—

by people marching in the streets, protesting

the requirement to die for the glory of...what glory will you die for?

And where did you serve? Name your war, _________,

just fill in the blank from the list above.

Oh, you didn't serve? Yes, that's when it changed.

Selective service¹⁴, the infamous draft, not a craft

beer, but a requirement to spend two years furthering

the cause, what cause, why the Walmart/Exxon cause,

the shop 'til you drop cause of consumptive capitalism.

The dogs of war now waltz with corporate partners

to protect the lubricant of their military-industrial machine

and keep it producing the Great American Dreamscape,

the world of WoW, shiny, glittery, unattainable: status quo

for me and you.

III. Ethos¹⁵

Market madness, wealth unbound and controlled by the few,

creates a rigged game that we can play but can't win:

“The business of America is business” so we are told, so we are sold.

The Street's up on good bad news, it's just banking tanking:

nothing to worry about. Just 'cause you're out of hearth and home,

don't doubt the capitalist tout: nothing to worry about.

Foreclosed, gone, God, they're tired, the motel room is crowded.

Tough days, worse nights, work gone, they were fired.

Working for gas, that's all they were doing, now nothing but waiting:

waiting for work, waiting for a hand—not government baiting.

Ask the red-wing blackbird if she'd mourn the loss of her marsh

if it kept the eagle eating? Hope? Nope.

It's gonna be dope, pope, or the rope¹⁶:

'cause the eagle's waiting,

on me and you.

IV. Pathos¹⁷

Earth Day in Propagandistan and everyone is green,

corporate hacks included, desperate with denial, yet

earth's day is quickly closing with the setting sun,

as boss hogs' privileged piggy progeny motor

bloated SUVs down turnpikes demanding more,

more, more, more: spend that inheritance!

Let foreign banks finance the tanks and the ranks

while we drain the oil, eat the last fish—sushi anyone?

—cut the last tree, the world's tree, for more burger land.

Must we decide between the ring of the cash register

and the haunting, lonely cry of the loon?

No? Well eat shit and bark at the moon.

The point of convergence is here, Gaia shakes

and quivers, trying to throw off her human virus,

wreaking havoc with earthquakes, tornadoes,

fires, drought. Virtual wars on terror, drugs, and people,

dehumanization of populations, hungry children, elders

cast by the way, prisons full to capacity,

all enabled by a Greek chorus of nine Supremes,

as the elitists strut their stuff and transfer whatever

you had to their accounts: you didn't need it, did you?

Where is your anger? Factories closed, jobs gone,

corporations controlling the government—

the best Congress that money can buy—

the food supply, energy, your right to decent health care,

privatizing their profits, but socializing their losses:

just let us pick up the tab, we're glad to help you out.

We the people, dominated by too big to fail

corporations granted the rights of people, struggle

to keep our jobs, food on the table, our families together.

Where is your anger? It's happening now and you are

living in the moment: now, not then, not when, now...

the Four Horsemen¹⁸ are mounted and riding out to destroy

me and you.

Endnotes:

1. Logos: cosmic reason – the source of world order and intelligibility.
2. WoW: World of Warcraft, a multiplayer, online game by Blizzard Entertainment.
3. Burning Crusade is the first expansion set to WoW.
4. Cataclysm is the third expansion set to WoW.
5. Pattern recognition: assignment of an output value to an input value, i.e., classification.
6. Signing savvy: using American Sign Language to communicate
7. syrup: Corn syrup, subsidized by our government, contributes to the obesity epidemic.
8. Fuel from food: ethanol made from corn, sugar beets, etc.; known as biofuel.
9. Adam Smith: the philosopher king of capitalism.
10. Karl Marx: the philosopher king of communism.
11. Chaos: any condition or place of total disorder or confusion.
12. Gaia: the primal Greek goddess personifying Mother Earth.
13. father at Trinity: J. Robert Oppenheimer, lead scientist of the Manhattan Project, father of the A-bomb; Trinity was the code name for the first nuclear weapon test, the prototype of the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan in 1945.
14. Selective service: the Selective Service Act requiring all men to sign up for the military draft at age eighteen.
15. Ethos: the governing or central principle in a movement, work of art, mode of expression, or the like, that characterize or pervade a group, community, people, or ideology.
16. dope, pope, or the rope: drugs, religion, or suicide
17. Pathos: a quality in something or someone that arouses feelings of pity, sympathy, tenderness, or sorrow in another.
18. the Four Horsemen: the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse from the book of Revelation in the Bible, riding on white, red, black, and pale horses, symbolizing Conquest, War, Famine and Death.