Evil Archy

An experiment in terze rima verse by Wayan; April 2008

My love works, as millions do in a silver downtown tower: a pressure-pot of rue. No, not rue the poison flower. The rue of regret is all her day, trapped in the unthinking power Of spineless middlemen who pay no heed to Cheryl's knowing. And that's my song today: Capitalism's red-ink autumn. Going, going, gone! Oh, it deliquesces, like midnight-black oil flowing Off a dying fungus, oozing messes we despair to clean, or burn. But we know who to blame: rich jackasses. Easy to do. So it hurts to learn that my friends who work outside all these sleek steel vertical temples of Earn working in schools, municipalities, non-for-profits dedicated to service, to a cleaner breeze Suffer the same. Greed's overrated! About this, even Marx was a fool. For example: my friend Alder faded From happy years in a co-op school where parents and staff pooled their expertise: an Ethiope chef cooked teff to make ya drool, while other parents bandaged knees, raised hens, tomatoes, rabbits--took initiative with uproar and with ease. But Alder's day is strained now through a sieve, for the State took over! Mummified their school in rules without an inch of give. Once enthused, now she can barely bide, but can't retire: they trashed her pension, too. And when she asked how much was left, they lied. Profit didn't turn her work to poo. The wreckers of her lifework showed no shame And worked for We the People. Sad but true. So don't tell me that capital's to blame, that greed fades our face, slows our pace from life to leather, from fleet to lame.

Not bastards at the top, not gender, class, or race. Oh, howl at the truth, not the innocent moon! Hierarchy's our villain. Blame the right face. Dance to your own, not authority's tune! I know, I know: impractical and snarky. But we lived bossless once! And will again, and soon. We anarchists call this boss-world "archy". (Not like starchy--archy was that poet-cockroach! This archy rhymes with malarkey.) Archy's still beyond reproach. Autarchy or demarchy, an Asian sweat shop Or the sweatless air-conditioned coach Of a Lear jet: room at the top. Always, always a boss on your boss and he says hop. And you hop. I howl my terze song to mourn the loss of (mythical) free folk in de light. A state? A firm? Ah, neither gives a toss for us in their belly's foul dank night. Only alone or in co-ops are we free to work as we feel right. No, down the archaic ladder we flee! The prehuman rungs of a thuggish pack: alpha, beta, grunts. The primal three Born of a need to respond in a crack second, to the pounce and slash of a sabertooth attack. Still of use in war and crash, in fast-breaking crisis, archy is our social default, the hardwired cache We switch on in that horror-hour when suddenly New York's a blot and smoke coils up from the second tower. But the heart of our terror's certainly not Al-Qaeda. It's archy itself, if I'm right. We beg to be led, in our panicky spot. And til we recognize what to fight and stab the hub of our web of woes, level that ladder with all our might, Shred our mummy-shroud... I suppose we'll stagger on, bosses clutching tight, drudging through this archist night. And so it goes. And goes.