STOCKS OPEN UP
Bad news fills the enveloping aether,
the smoke and ash of misinformation
clogging the air so it is hard to breathe,
clogging the mind so it is hard to think.
Minor members of the plutocracy panic.
Politicians trip over themselves turning
on each other trying to escape scandal.
Wars, promulgated for profit, fought
by desperate volunteers, mercenaries,
and zealots continue to rage and burn
around the globe in distant places
too easy to marginalize and forget.
The price of everything increases.
Tax cuts for corporations trickle down as
new and increased charges for the poor -
money for that bloated military budget
has to come from somewhere.
Hurricanes flood out communities.
Wildfires burn out neighborhoods.
But everything is okay this morning
because stocks have opened UP.
There are profits to be made from misery
so stocks have opened UP.
Disaster turns easily to dollars
so stocks have opened UP.
Scandal transmutes into entertainment
so stocks have opened UP.
There are new records to be broken
now that stocks have opened UP.
And I sit here with my little IRA,
tugging at the tuxedo coattails
of profiteers, pillagers, and philanderers,
counting the incremental increase in
my pale, inadequate retirement fund.
Wondering how I ever allowed myself
to be leveraged into this system,
to profit from this evil in even so small
a way and how I could ever survive
into old age without it’s meager
payoff for my tacit collaboration.
--M.J. Arcangelini
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