swifts  &  s l o w s · a quarterly of crisscrossings

the dream
Scott Taylor

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the dream

nothing possible anymore,
all avenues shut down.
humanity no longer human.
sign up or sign off.
the way.

the big grow bigger,
the small grow smaller,
all for one, none for all.
the american version
of common sense.
winner take all,
period.
someone said
it was a good idea once.

faceless corporate wasteland,
soul outlawed.
empty palaces haunted
by genteel criminals,
milquetoast men with tiny minds
who somehow rule the world.

suited silver-haired thugs,
dapper men who’ve learned how to hide,
who hoard instinctively,
who pretend at civility
whilst practicing murder.
kept behind barred gates,
where no one can get at them.

funneling endgame,
siphoned to the top,
nothing to slow them,
nothing to stop.
the rules ever crookeder.
the playing field tilts, narrows,
the lights wink out
but the big buildings remain.
night has fallen.

all for one, none for all,
the grand american dream,
the experiment that’s supposed to work.

long empty boarded-up streets,
refugee camps,
colonies of men and women going hungry,
with nowhere else to go.
rents too high
and all the rest too.
nothing within reach.
the elite behind walls
and the masses without.
hands off,
no interference,
everything is fine,
the design was sound,
the machine is functioning as expected.
the talking heads assuring you
that nothing is amiss,
this is as it must be.
even god wants it this way.
listen to your betters,
let the adults talk.

whole cities full of empty buildings,
the whole thing zoned and parceled
and cordoned off,
for no one,
not for you,
barely even for him,
not for anyone.

antiseptic death
passed off as virtue,
as productivity,
as necessity.
two more yachts and food stamps.
another island and the heat off due to nonpayment.
there is nothing wrong with your picture,
do not adjust.
the man in the suit
knows what’s right for you.
you are not seeing
what’s in front of you.
the man next to you
is your enemy.
don’t look at me,
blame him.

three more summer houses
and ten thousand people in tents,
lining the freeways,
choking the arteries.
one guy at the top,
the pyramid inevitable.
a sea of broken backs beneath.
the american way,
the only way.
someone said it once.

a hundred years
and now they’re actually building the buildings
out of the bodies,
they’ve learned to petrify them,
to make adobe out of the populace,
they stack them all the way to the top of manhattan,
the board meetings sunk in organic matter,
the documents written in flesh.
the nukes are flying,
also inevitable,
but that’s okay because the summer retreats have been sealed properly,
they can withstand impressive amounts of radiation.
there’s always the bunkers if things get really nasty.
the blacks and browns
have been properly eradicated,
they weren’t working for their food anyway.
the days are cold.
the sun is dimmer now
behind those strange brown clouds
but the palaces still glimmer sometimes,
especially around sunset.
the market is up
so everything must be fine.

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Scott Taylor hails from Raleigh, North Carolina.  He is a writer and a musician, and an avid world traveler.