Empire of the Golden Arch
Rangzen Shanti
Slaves of the empire, running in designer shoes
Jumping into jacked up cars, cool according to commercials
Ready to drink the Miller beer
Which they have seen on a billion billboards
Listening to pop music through the glory of mp3s
Falling in love with corporate-created cool
Rather than the boundless beauty music offers
Dulled into an apathy and a quick consumerist fix
Impatient poets, sitting in smoky cafés
Surrounded by the tightening terror’s noose
Conform conform conform
A voice which appears in every American scene
At first a whisper, but as peers approach
It grows and Grows and GROWS
To a monstering behemoth:
If you want friends, conform
If you want money, conform
If you want success, conform
If you want sex and tits and ass, conform
help
A bohemian revolution is brewing
Fought not in the Bastille or Red Square
But in the eternal Concord of the sacred soul
A battle against everything we’ve been taught
Against the essence of what we’re told we are
A revolution which begins and ends with each of us
A revolution against American culture
To stop corporations
Fueled by an endless supply of wealth
Stolen from the stomachs of Latinas and Southeast Asians
American culture, Bah!
When I hear that vile phrase I want to break the first precept
And slit its bulky throat
Let loose the blood they leeched from the rest of the world
-Milwaukee, late winter, 2006
