Dixon
09-07-2008, 12:22 AM
Since September 11th is nearly upon us, and since this issue has been brought up in a new WaccoTalk thread, I thought I'd post this poem which I wrote in 2001-2002:
MAMMON’S CHAMPION
“It shall cause your towers to fall, make of you a pyre of flame,
O you who dwell on many waters, rich in treasure, wide in fame.
You bow unto your god of gold. Your pride of might shall be ashamed.”
--Hamilton Camp, “Pride of Man”
Resplendent in armor of red, white and blue, polished and buffed,
Mammon’s Champion bestrides the battered earth.
The vampire’s vampire,
brobdingnagian leech with veins of tainted water and arteries of filthy
lucre,
devours air, energy and life as oily guts bellow putrid smoke,
radiating menace from glassy eyes in the sky
to feet of poisoned clay.
He extends his reach,
steel-boned and plastic-thewed,
everywhere.
His thousand grasping hands, sheathed in bullet-fanged puppets,
plunder freely in fiery orgasms of perverted power.
North, South, East, West,
all host the sucking tendrils.
The green lushness of the Mother
hardens, turns grey, is filigreed with rivets,
and sold.
She screams from the mouths of her children
as the rape of millennia grinds on.
Business as usual.
Mammon’s Champion is a wolf in saint’s clothing.
His truth is to lie.
Born of genocide, he names himself champion of justice.
Suckled on slavery, he masquerades as defender of liberty.
Addicted to dominance, he trumpets brotherhood.
Sower of tyranny, he dubs himself democracy.
Hearts and minds magnetized,
pointing as one toward this Polaris of pride,
we are blithe fish in the ocean of programmed illusion,
dazzled by the electronic veil that hides by gorgeous artifice
the ravenous black hole,
the real engine of Mammon’s world.
In the heart of Mammon’s Champion is an innocent child.
Her wish is Daddy’s command.
She cries for some bright ribbon or bauble
and the world is sucked dry to make her smile.
She points to a toy she can’t live without
and a thousand cannons take aim in a distant land.
She tugs at Daddy’s heartstrings
and the chains of exploitation are pulled tighter
and yet tighter.
Her love is bought with a torrent of trinkets
fished out of a river of blood.
Business as usual.
Only the children are innocent.
The rest of us have blood on our muzzles.
Mammon’s Champion has a hard-on for the Earth.
His gargantuan duple erection affronts the September sky;
puffed-up, glowing temple of hubris,
shameless monument to the glory of rape.
Size does matter.
It’s the American way.
Suddenly, an unwelcome revelation--
the silvery chickens have come home to roost.
Poetic justice: they’re big, hard and full of fire!
Two fell swoops and the duple erection is impotent
in the face of karma.
Mammon’s Champion sports a cyclopean pentagonal sheriff’s badge
that would do the Duke proud, Pilgrim;
sacred symbol of presumed privilege
to hold the world at gunpoint
and make it dance.
The blue sky gives birth to a silver bullet with our name on it
which blasts the five-sided bullseye of the military target
sending fragments into the heart of Mammon’s Champion.
Mammon’s Champion can’t take it
nearly as well as he dishes it out.
The heart that was hard as adamant
when foreign blood lubricated the imperial machinery
suddenly is tenderized by this unaccustomed pounding.
So strange, the myopic empathy of the self-centered.
Honor among thieves indeed!
But Mammon’s Champion takes pride in never learning.
No shock is strong enough to free the rusted gears of reason
seized up in the entropy of corruption.
Stay the course!
though children’s bones crunch beneath your boots.
Business as usual will save us from our sins.
The adamantine heart, though shaken,
will not feel the agony of empathy for its own victims.
It fortifies itself with fascist architecture,
the iron bands that restrain love
in the service of fear
and strangle freedom
in the service of power,
as the potentates of hard righteousness
gleefully invoke the safety of the police state,
a fragile peace indeed, without justice,
shivering like a soap bubble
balanced on the point of a sword.
In the belly of Mammon’s Champion are germs.
We are few and very tiny,
but carry a dangerous contagion:
raging love.
-- Dixon Wragg
MAMMON’S CHAMPION
“It shall cause your towers to fall, make of you a pyre of flame,
O you who dwell on many waters, rich in treasure, wide in fame.
You bow unto your god of gold. Your pride of might shall be ashamed.”
--Hamilton Camp, “Pride of Man”
Resplendent in armor of red, white and blue, polished and buffed,
Mammon’s Champion bestrides the battered earth.
The vampire’s vampire,
brobdingnagian leech with veins of tainted water and arteries of filthy
lucre,
devours air, energy and life as oily guts bellow putrid smoke,
radiating menace from glassy eyes in the sky
to feet of poisoned clay.
He extends his reach,
steel-boned and plastic-thewed,
everywhere.
His thousand grasping hands, sheathed in bullet-fanged puppets,
plunder freely in fiery orgasms of perverted power.
North, South, East, West,
all host the sucking tendrils.
The green lushness of the Mother
hardens, turns grey, is filigreed with rivets,
and sold.
She screams from the mouths of her children
as the rape of millennia grinds on.
Business as usual.
Mammon’s Champion is a wolf in saint’s clothing.
His truth is to lie.
Born of genocide, he names himself champion of justice.
Suckled on slavery, he masquerades as defender of liberty.
Addicted to dominance, he trumpets brotherhood.
Sower of tyranny, he dubs himself democracy.
Hearts and minds magnetized,
pointing as one toward this Polaris of pride,
we are blithe fish in the ocean of programmed illusion,
dazzled by the electronic veil that hides by gorgeous artifice
the ravenous black hole,
the real engine of Mammon’s world.
In the heart of Mammon’s Champion is an innocent child.
Her wish is Daddy’s command.
She cries for some bright ribbon or bauble
and the world is sucked dry to make her smile.
She points to a toy she can’t live without
and a thousand cannons take aim in a distant land.
She tugs at Daddy’s heartstrings
and the chains of exploitation are pulled tighter
and yet tighter.
Her love is bought with a torrent of trinkets
fished out of a river of blood.
Business as usual.
Only the children are innocent.
The rest of us have blood on our muzzles.
Mammon’s Champion has a hard-on for the Earth.
His gargantuan duple erection affronts the September sky;
puffed-up, glowing temple of hubris,
shameless monument to the glory of rape.
Size does matter.
It’s the American way.
Suddenly, an unwelcome revelation--
the silvery chickens have come home to roost.
Poetic justice: they’re big, hard and full of fire!
Two fell swoops and the duple erection is impotent
in the face of karma.
Mammon’s Champion sports a cyclopean pentagonal sheriff’s badge
that would do the Duke proud, Pilgrim;
sacred symbol of presumed privilege
to hold the world at gunpoint
and make it dance.
The blue sky gives birth to a silver bullet with our name on it
which blasts the five-sided bullseye of the military target
sending fragments into the heart of Mammon’s Champion.
Mammon’s Champion can’t take it
nearly as well as he dishes it out.
The heart that was hard as adamant
when foreign blood lubricated the imperial machinery
suddenly is tenderized by this unaccustomed pounding.
So strange, the myopic empathy of the self-centered.
Honor among thieves indeed!
But Mammon’s Champion takes pride in never learning.
No shock is strong enough to free the rusted gears of reason
seized up in the entropy of corruption.
Stay the course!
though children’s bones crunch beneath your boots.
Business as usual will save us from our sins.
The adamantine heart, though shaken,
will not feel the agony of empathy for its own victims.
It fortifies itself with fascist architecture,
the iron bands that restrain love
in the service of fear
and strangle freedom
in the service of power,
as the potentates of hard righteousness
gleefully invoke the safety of the police state,
a fragile peace indeed, without justice,
shivering like a soap bubble
balanced on the point of a sword.
In the belly of Mammon’s Champion are germs.
We are few and very tiny,
but carry a dangerous contagion:
raging love.
-- Dixon Wragg