Every successful revolution has its Thermidor.1
During foggy “Morning in America,”
Gipper ascension, Iron Curtain fall,
you might have noticed special phenomenon –
Greener grass available over seas
for oligarchs and prune-faced Bankers
who never met ambitious politicians
and cheap labor they did not like.
Corporate benefactors enjoy paradise
beyond that promised by smirking bush gods.
Wealth become speech, private islands,
starlets upon every mattress,
Marc Rich pardons for sale,
and world intelligence and police
assigned as all-encapsulating condom,
forever protecting the Rich Man
from Lazarus’s “preferential option”sphere,2
Nevermore land of ugly sores.
May 21, 2014,
morning after Pennsylvania primaries,
like Adam’s exit from Eden Gardens, Ur,
I rode C.O.L.T.S. bus transportation
to Scranton’s Gerrity’s Market.
Stuffed in back pack, a portable poster
proclaimed “Down with food monopolies!”
Rainfall, at Gerrity’s entrance, I blocked door,
raised poster for fellow consumers to see.
Cries from anxious coupon-holders,
tears of fear, “Arrest him, arrest him!”
Apples hurled my way, I hurt, revolted.
One bite into cracked Empire apple,
a worm reared head, dropped, dropped,
slipped deep into juicy white core.
The worm naively thought it escaped,
avoided becoming bait, disenfranchisement,
until my front teeth fracked in pursuit –
POP!
Worm blood bubbled, other half free to join
the United Jacobin Fruit Growers Club of CA.
So much I know about thermidorian reactions –
Rains of Terror subject to reigns of sun shine…,
the early worm gets the meatiest oligarch,
and why do I always awaken so late?
- E.H. Carr, Stalin, Soviet Studies, July 1953; Page 3
- “Preferential option for the poor” is a concept controversially introduced in a 1968 letter, written by Father Pedro Arrupe, Superior General of the Society of Jesus, addressed to Latin American Jesuits. Presumably such available policy was not just rah-rah political “points-of-light” and income tax deductible strategy talk that 21st century religious “haves” are so accustomed and conditioned to hearing.