Black and white morality ends in fifty shades of gray
Fundamentalism produces a creepy schizophrenia
Of puritanical repression and libertine release
On camera the televangelist prostitutes himself as a hireling priest
Off camera he seeks salvation in a hired harlot
The senator rails against homosexuality, while tapping his foot in the bathroom stall.
Prudes behaving imprudently
The religion of progress and development is equally schizophrenic
The land developer’s map, is a scroll, upon which is written
A fundamentalist prophecy for destroying all that is wild and free
He pulls out his pen as if to illustrate the act
Black lines on white paper produce a scaled picture of landscapes to be denuded, razed, undressed
Cartesian pornography
Maps of planned despoliation of mountaintops and prairie and woodlands
Spread out like a girly magazine upon a sweaty banker’s mahogany desk
Of course all this rape is bankrolled by your taxes, your purchase of throw-away crap, and sometimes your tithe
We’re all financing the weapons trade: Monsanto’s plow, the war machine’s bayonet, the literalist bible society, legal firms.
It’s all for the public good, rather, the public god, who rapes and pillages.
Corporate headquarters invade our hindquarters with instruments sharpened in a board room in some distance city. A rape that does not end with the closing bell.
Authorized by some General Assembly. “Gather round boys! We’re passing out more money for the next go round at her”
Priests of black and white would have us believe that their dystopian vision creates a world more beautiful than the wild one.
What an utter, horrific nightmare is this new Eden. Lush suburban homes neatly contained within gated communities. Monstrosities raised from the mad developer’s blueprints, safely stored in his drawers for use the next go around. “Have at it boys! This land is ripe and ready!”
Suburbanites, those awkward men-children born of the violent union of land developer and raped earth.
They pipe out their shit to be recycled for drinking water. “What are those specks at the bottom of my glass?”
They illuminate their empty lives with the power of black coal from a raped mountain
Their fat asses getting fatter with each episode of C.S.I.: Suburbia. They’re too stupid to see that they are the ones whodunit
As my anger was diminishing to apathy. Just as I was nearly ready to give up, I happened to look underneath the disgusting cellulite belly of this beast
And I saw a weakness that we could penetrate. Hubris. Babylonian presumption. Responsible for the fall of so many Tsars, county commissioners, bureaucrats, constables, generals, suburbanites. All of them preoccupied as they are with their narcissistic schemes, cybernetic orgies, petroleum-greened lawns, and Wars on Everything.
While they move toward the cliff like a wild band of drunken monkeys, I thought it best to
Read poetry
Plant fruit trees
Saunter
Quiet my angry mind and
Study war
Not the war raged by the Church and State rapists, God, no. I mean the good war. The will to power.
There is a will to power that permeates the universe
It is not subject to the authority of flag or vestment
A will forever churning in the aboriginal void
The power of desire – pure, native desire
A mighty, rushing wind heading down some ancient mountain
A Dionysian will to sing the songs of an intoxicated wilderness stream
The will to power is the will that topples the developer’s master plan
The will to love and the will to war
To love only when we’ve learned how water flows
To the low places
To war only when we’ve learned to dance
In the open spaces
To love all the way to the low places
To fight to open what is closed
When you encounter black and white along the way
Laugh at it, and, after much angry quaking, it will topple
Understand that you may have to watch this event from your jail cell.
When you are lured into the vapid gray patio of suburban banality, flee to the mountains, take to the road,
Discover sacred landscapes of richness and depth, joy and grief
Because you reject black and white,
Because you flee gray
Because you race barefoot toward the rising sun
Because you choose color
The grotesque cheerleaders of the sedentary society
Will call you a sinner.
Do not let them drag you to the alter
You are a person of color
You have the Light
With all its prismatic variations.
Live and die a person of color