capitalism

I've seen the best minds of my generation destroyed by capitalism,

no longer starving, hysterical, naked,

but portly, Prozac fed, Armani clad,
 

dragging themselves through neon shopping malls at dawn looking for a

cashflow fix,

angelheaded hype-stars burning for a brand name connection - Victoria's

Secret, maybe, or Starbucks - to open up another outlet, to milk the

sacred cow of commerce and make things predictable, tedious, subject to

a national marketing strategy;

WHO once in poverty and tatters, hollow-eyed and high, sat up smoking in

the supernatural darkness...

WHO were expelled from the academies for craziness & publishing obscene

odes on the windows of the skull, and

 

WHO are now engaged in the most mammoth dumbing down of culture the

world has ever seen,

WHO wringing their hands in car retrieval lobbies of Intercontinentals,

after six hour feasts, impatient for the stretch Rolls, sing madrigals

to global consumerism, sternly reminding me of Soviet horrors, Tianamen

Square, famines, secret police ...

and anyway, the entire population of China deserves to be shod in Nike,

with their distinctive polyurethane airbag cushions,

containing sulphur hexafluoride,

 

the world's most lethal greenhouse gas,

 

with a global warming hit 22,000 times greater than

 

carbon dioxide,

and which hangs in the atmosphere for 500 years;

yes, produced by girls in Indonesia for five bucks,

strikes outlawed, overtime compulsory, 20 cents an hour,

 

Nike's inflate on-the-shelf to $200.

 

Asked about onerous conditions,

the area manager shrugs:

"I don't know that I need to know".

Bliss.

 

Shimmering on Fortune's list of fabulous

 

rates of return to investors, (46.9%),

 

Nike is a Shareholder Superstar,

to the best minds of my generation,

not a Sweatshop Slavelord.

 

 

These are the minds

WHO manipulate, degrade and exploit the ass end of pop culture in all

its forms, using tabloid sadism, salivating weeklies, splatter-trash

cinema ("it's art! it's art!"), footie fetishism, and gluttony elevated

to haute cuisine,

WHO justify intellectual slumming, star-fucking-then-crushing, fad

promotions, supergossip, with the

 

ineluctable logic of economic rationalism,

 

the most odious of opiates,

the cruellest of illusions,

WHO, knowing the decline of health & happiness outside their elite

zones, persist in formenting the great Dumbing Down (including their own

minds, once finegazing at starry nights with radiant cool eyes, poetry

on their lips and no thought of material excess), yes, subsidising the

hip vulgarity of media scams with ads, promos and "tie-ins" for

 

objects objects objects

of destruction,

 

either of self,

or the swirling backyard we 5.6 billion inhabit, and

 

WHO, by fostering commercial falsehoods,

shield us from the truth,

 

and each other,

either in small matters, like wrinkle banishing lotions or

big myths, like multi millionaires being good for the planet because

gold trickles down to the peasants in Brazil, ha!

(and to avoid too many cliches you'll notice I haven't mentioned

 

resource depletion);

WHO don't know that they need to know, these growth-rate trippers

hallucinating Sydney 2000 real estate,

WHO provoke the scandalised descendants of Victor Hugo to call for "a

halt to the pillage of Disney", after their ancestor's story was stolen

and his name excluded from posters plastering the planet, nor honoured

in the merchandised debauch of fluffy toys, CD's & video nasties;

WHO so excessively reward the chairman of Disney

that it would take a Mickey Mouse pyjama seamstress in Haiti

three lifetimes

to earn what Michael Eisner makes in a day,

WHO pride themselves on stretching the frontiers of youth marketing,

even beyond alco-pop, "the most important teen drinking trend in

decades", to the irresistable alchemy of ...

 

alco-milk;

WHO, because of soaring US profits of the female shaving industry,

 

Target Europe with a $20 million campaign to render women uncouth &

smelly unless they reach for a

 

plastic pink handled Lady Protector,

every day,

WHO once screamed out of windows in despair until rescued by throngs of

songsters dreaming gleaming impossible utopias, for the hell of it, for

the high of it, and now, looking back, plan to sanitize & bastardize it

as

a 1000 acre Woodstock Theme Park

 

of museums, train rides, theatres, and jelly vats writhing with

skinny-dipping hippie robots,

 

a Hard Rock cafe franchise and,

to promote Mega Virgin Global,

 

a sky-flying inflatable Jimi Hendrix;

(Why not?

 

Che Guevara is already a Swatch watch);

as the likelihood of real political change recedes,

we are told,

people need symbols of resistance -

it makes them feel better;

WHO in everyday seeming unimportant ways

connive in their own dumbing down -

 

as did John Travolta, recently on David Letterman worldwide, (isn't

everything?) hugging, schmoozing, drivel-drooling, playing to the

 

brain dead gallery,

 

anything to stop futon spuds channel drifting,

never to say anything of import, or even for a moment

think aloud

in case it unleashes the wrath of an unseen ratings god

 

and crush a career,

(Maybe they're right.

It's why Dennis Potter called his cancer

Rupert),

WHO realise that outside their gilded enclaves are gridlocked

slumblocks,

cars cars cars,

exeeding 500 million this year

airports airports airports ,

annual release of carbon dioxide 23 bilion tonnes,

casinos multiplying, like youth suicides, tides of landless, jobless,

homeless, swarming citywards,

 

trees felled, salt rising, heat rising, cancer rising, coasts wrecked -

a strip of Bali three McDonalds already - everywhere mangroves uprooted

for hotels, dugongs gutted,

countless mammal species,

 

168 bird species judged critically endangered,

goodbye, goodbye,

who know in their hearts of this hellshock, yes, these best minds of my

generation, who control & mould the global brainbox and cannot bear to

recognise the most obvious connections between what they do

and don't do

 

and the destiny of this toxic orb.

 

In my dreams you walk dripping from a lost journey on the superhighway

in tears

 

to my clifftop door in the Western night.