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Brother Variable
Brother Variable,
you and I are tiny unknowns that act.
We love and injure and suffer
but we are meant to produce capital. Do not forget that.
We are parts in an engine
cycling, sending our waste
out on long, flat tankers
to be sailed where we won’t have to see it.
Variable, my Brother,
you and I and how we add up has been projected.
Anticipated.
There is a gentle curve, coloured red for ease of clarity,
that reaches into to the upper right-hand corner of infinity,
An x-axis denotes rising food prices,
and a y-axis shows population response,
and the bright yellow star at the end of the arc
is the point where the local population of human beings
will stop
then reach for a rock or rifle, gasoline-filled bottle
and burn their city down.
Everyone, even you or I, can be rich, the want ads
have read throughout history.
Brother, the variables
have all been separated into like terms.
Tents have been pitched far
from the financial core, rhyming cries rise
a lament
for the passing of the era of our comfort.
Returns are returns and we shall return.
Local authorities are outfitted with
gas masks and the authority
to maintain economic certainty in the marketplace,
to push the yellow star back further still.
On Sunday, a bearded white man from the Christian Children’s Fund
appears on the screen and tells us that you and I can
feed a starving family for a dollar a day,
Maintain them in the dirt where we’ve deposited them.
They are the exhaust of our engine, the remainder,
upholstering the cushions we rest on and
we do not want to be the ones with
needle and thread, squinting. Granddaddy fought
for the betterment of mankind. He was issued
a machine gun, shipped to the South Pacific, and ordered
to kill every last slant-eyed motherfucker he saw,
birthing our dying middle class.
Brother Variable, I want you to tell that camera what’s really inside us.
Say: “I will not become that nigger on the garbage heap.
Not me. We are staying, keeping what is ours.”
Use that word. It’s always served that function.
The cameras are off when we normally would but
now that things are slipping…
He was wrong when he said that
only they could make us believe 2+2=5.
We make ourselves believe in this math.
That it balances.
