culture fix

Powder Keg

my life is built on a fantasy. the collective mythology on pieces of paper and computer screens, that says that i have a lot of money.

you don't.

through marriage, a commonly accepted fantasy of permanence, my mother and i became people with lots of money. unlike you.

so, once we began buying into the illusion, we needed to learn how to play the part. in my family, i had to fight for years to be visible. i don't know whether my mother would have shed a tear had i placed a bullet in my skull. it may have taken her a day or two to even find out.

my mother, and the man that she married, spent their life intoxicated, and never once did one of us choose to live.

if i had ever decided that i want to be alive, i would be shut down as soon as i let them know.

my job was to be the best. at all cost.

i have a lot of money. you don't. you work for us. and we are not friends.

i could grow up and be successful. the best. a willing trophy. a 24 hour a day actor.

this is the real life of the rich. an intricate portrait of contentment precariously placed atop the hollow frame of our common alienation.

in my house, everyone was alone. and the space between us echoed our silent cries a million times deep within our throats. till we almost choked.

even if i had wanted to be alive, i would be beaten for trying.

i had to fight just to be visible.

there is an anger.

a killing rage.

and meanwhile, our public play went on seamlessly. the rich get richer, act 2 million.

meanwhile, 2 million of us are behind bars. meanwhile, the land has 250 times more people than it can sustainably hold. there is less than 2% of the wilderness that existed here upon columbus' arrival. even less buffalo.

from 1917-1921 so many men died on the battlefields of europe, that it became unfathomable to keep counting.

the men fought with 27 feet of bullets per machine gun.

lined up in trenches, the war dragged on with virtually no progress on either side. millions of men murdered one another for years on end. they were never truly told why.

within two years after the end of the war, my people in italy had to endure mussolini's fascist regime. all of the anarchists had either been murdered, placed in concentration camps or exiled.

in 1933, funded by george bush's great grandfather, hitler seized control of germany, backed by an army of fascist youth with nothing better to look forward to.

in the next twelve years, six million communists, anarchists, and homosexuals, along with six million jews, would be forced into slavery, brutal 'medical' experimentation, rape, and outright burning in ovens.

and then, in 1941, as if suffering from a collective amnesia, europe was again thrown into a war of unfathomable proportions.

again, millions of young men my age would be sent to kill one another for reasons that would never be truly explained.

the play continues on seamlessly. as millions upon millions of bodies pile in wars, slaughterhouses, reservations, prisons, ghettoes, and destitute nations throughout the world, the rich get richer.

there is an anger.

a killer inside me.

some days i want to grow up to be a sniper.

every day, all of us participate in the continuing murder of our people, our animal brethren, and our land. life is dying for the most agregrious and asinine of reasons.

it makes me want to murder with reason.

there is an anger. a killer inside you.

capitalism is a powder keg.

we all have an explosive potential. it is not always beautiful. often it's vulgar.

repulsive.

there was an explosion in littleton, colorado. again in a corporate office in massachussetts, at the hands of michael mcdermott. ted kaczinsky brought us a few dozen more explosions. express mail.

and hundreds more carried out by the nameless and unkown. the drunken mardi gras partiers throwing bottles at the philadelphia police. the children that beat and murder those that would raze them. the black youth that shoot back when the criminal ganags in blue come to take them to jail.

most of us are being drugged endlessly, as early as age three. the giant pharmaceutical firms, psychologists, prison construction compaines and the government are all in the business of keeping us addicted.

this is how we pretend that everything is working out all right.

"you don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind is blowing."

there is an anger.

a killing rage.

use it to set yourself free.

choose to live.