bentonville in poetry

as oligarchic corporations
kill local and livable jobs with short-term discounts
we bargain-shop ourselves back into serfdom
fellow working class people of other ethnicities
are not taking your jobs
rich white people siphoning off profits
for a new set of yachts are
no need for a fence between us and Mexico
let us built a barrier instead
between ourselves and Bentonville Arkansas

a great wall of Wal-Mart
trap them in their gated mansion hell
deliver them nothing with their own trucks
starve them out inside their battlements
until they concede
and stop contributing
toward our choking ourselves to death
stop selling us the goddamned rope
from which we slowly swing

all the economic growth seems to be going to people
who already have more than they need
there's a medical term for out-of-control growths
and that word is cancer
look I don't have all the answers
but I certainly know the question
how do we excise these tumours
with the least damage to the rest
of the body politic extant
how do we fix this

and anyway it seems odd
natural selection being driven now
by beneficial bank codes instead of
by beneficial genetic codes
seems like that'll backfire
the only information relevant
that gets passed down
the automated teller passwords
it seems ass-backwards
it seems like a recipe
for a future run by random idiots
just like the past-times' royalty
for an example

nothing is sacred
except for our fumbling stumbling attempts
at forging a shared human dignity
anything else can go
whatever we must scuttle
any mythedology
to aim for that far star
we have to go for it
everything else is just
stuff and nonsense
smarmy ideology
constructed for a desired effect
not an intellectual end
and Christ I'm sick of all this pretend
just to be polite
let's call them on their confected conflations
throw out the hardware
let's do it right

let us build a giant wall
between us all
and Bentonville Arkansas
and let the rats see
what it's like