Scribe
Scribe
2017
Affirmative Subtraction
AFFIRMATIVE SUBTRACTION
Affirmative Subtraction
is the dark underbelly
of the American Dream.
Affirmative Subtraction,
America's reaction
to her pariahs.
Forget them
Lose them
in the maelstrom
of our own busy struggle.
Affirmative Subtraction,
America's reaction
to her glossed-over dysfunction,
denying that her economy of privilege
privileges the privileged over others;
embracing a virulent ethos
that separates, isolates, suffocates;
denies by race, creed, color, religion
and lack of coin.
The survival of self at the expense of them
The U.S. Flag waving its “US”
only in the abstract air of philosophizing.
An ideal passed on like counterfeit money.
Affirmative Subtraction,
America's reaction
to the fear of want
Appropriate, confiscate, adjudicate
the resources for personal gain.
Share not, unless shared
for one’s own greater return
The doctrine by which we steal
the ocean for a drop of water
The doctrine of subtraction
by the right of conquest:
expunging the dry wells of poverty
from the ledger For Common Good—
the “general welfare” promoted
exclusively for the well-off.
Thirst, a weakness of genetics
to be culled by the pruning shears
of natural selection—
the power of the few
residing over the many
“for the good of all.”
America, Oh America!
The original dream hidden
by corporate smoke and mirrors:
The land of freedom
and free enterprise,
where the prize of wealth is hoarded
by enslavers of dreams
who prize slave labor
as the milieu of gods—
the grating down of common folk,
to begging worshipfully
for favors on high.
It is the naught
that tramples in the name of progress,
condemns in the name of superiority,
and persecutes in the name of
law and order
Grabs by design,
designs by utility,
uses up then discards ...
to the trash heap of human suffering,
to the rubbish pile of human anguish,
to the landfill of human abandonment.
America,
where lives of the America Dream
are mortgaged
in the dark night soul of elitism,
where each day, dreamers awake
to their blood, sweat and tears
denied “the blessings of liberty
to ourselves and our posterity.”
The our in that benediction
drawn like a noose too tight
on their hopes and dreams.
America,
where hope against hope
strains the heart
of hapless dreamers,
climbing for the vaunted mountain top
chicaned over their molehills of prosperity—
another "trail of tears” sanitized
another "longest walk” deodorized …
in the slow strangulation of death.
Ashes to ashes … dust to dust.
Monday, December 25, 2017