Neue Ordnung Poem by Paul Kesler

As the stock market rises and
the sweat from maquilladoras drips to the
rhythm of pounding machines,
smiling investors swill champagne,
fermented from blood-sucked workers,
while mirrored walls smile multiply
over the vanished bodies.

As workers fall,
shot from the guns of finance
to unemployed offices
where contractors gather to underbid
the still-unwithered scabs before
dust from their shuffling
footsteps blows to the south and
the stock market rises.

As the stock market rises and
the pulse
of the nation throbs weakly,
doctors and nurses trade stats
culled from daily tabloids and
nightly tabloids and midday tabloids
belched from the mouths of pollsters
curried by doctors and nurses
while the
body of the state recoils and
the stock market rises.

As the stock market rises and
the mountebanks mounted on tramps
fart backwards to the crowds gathered eagerly
for the latest news of prosperity,
bank accounts pulse weakly
under the onslaught of doctors and
nurses trotting forward to attend
the sweet, rotting body of the state.

As the stock market rises
and the Great Nanny trundles the
limousines and country clubs
to conventions where
the masked bandit of Uncle Sam,
ringed by walls of policeman and stone
and rifles and bullets,
smiles and the Head Goat smirks
to the furious crowds outside.

As the stock market rises and
the falling bodies of Cyprus Greece Iceland
roll to the ditch where countries too small
to concern the doctors and nurses taking
dictation from the tabloids farting backwards
from the body of the state
rot conventionally onward like
patients no longer haunted by the ghost
of John Maynard Keynes,
sold at auction long ago,
since slavery is more marketable than ever.