ARMIES

Been a while now, hasn't it?

I started the whole Free-Write Wednesdays idea so that I could outrun my inner critic at least once a week and make something - anything. The past few months, the inner critic has [quite evidently] won. But miracles and disasters have a way of shutting her up...



Public disaster and private miracle have conspired to wake me up before sunrise and have compelled me to pound away at my laptop...

Here's the 'disaster' bit first.

Won't bore with glib musings on state of affairs, will simply present today's offering:

ARMIES

You already know it,
when you call them 'greedy'
that this 'greed' is your greed
(the army of your nightmares!)
that spares nothing, cares for nothing, consumes
everything
you have given them billboards for hearts
you have sold their futures for figures
you priced them out of everything
even their own education
but they are wily though
(the army of your immorality!)
you call them wily
but as you say it
you know it is the exact flavour of your own trickiness
robbing with one hand while you distract
with the other
from every pocket, from every continent

spreading the pain, preserving your wealth
they are 'without conscience', 'careless vandals'
'careless arsonists', lit petrol bombs, big-chested in the firelight
(the army of your callousness!)
'mindless' like mindless made-up money
bombs like your bombs, 'empty' like you are empty

of everything but lies and justifications
their 'empty' is the exact hollow
shade of your selfishness
they burn at the exact heat of your
coldness
burning, burning the houses they will
never afford to buy
burning, burning the shops they can't afford
to shop at
taking the products that mean nothing

they have been told mean everything
they run in 'gangs' like your interconnected
gangs of moneyspinners and rhetoricspitters
(your army of thieves!)
they steal like you steal from us
they are the bad children
you are the parent who neglects
who abuses, who sells your children for
cash and for control
(the innocent army of babies
on the front-line of capitalism
the innocent army of babies on the front-line of racism
the innocent army of babies on the front-line of class-ism!)
you stand there
stand there and tell us
GO ON! tell us
like some retarded big-jawed effing super-hero
that you're going to send the army in
but you know and you know and you know
that
you ARE
what you condemn!

Can't say any more than that right now... But maybe next time I should. Or maybe next time I should talk about miracles...

Soon,

Gemxx