god, love, money and other snares - by Darren Francis

wreckage of earth. finite resources. all territories described then denied. 

i move out from zero point. america my lovesong. this colony we squander and call a kingdom. i need to find me some pleasure. london was made for me. i count biosurvival tokens. love is everywhere and alcohol is good. in a coffee bar men hold napkins to their mouths. align cups to saucers. starbucked. i reach for my beer, feel city blossom in my veins. 

i walk london's chartered pavements. on sunny goodge street i fold myself in. don't need my wings tonight. pass restaurants chromed and domed where a month of my salary is an evening's fodder and water. i like these streets. everything is for sale. all things turned into portents. what do you want? how many can i get you? how much can you afford? streets of cheer where the naked sell skin for clothes, the dumb sell brain for magazine, where the starving sell throat for food. i can't get songs out from my head. star wars has crashed my sex life. 

addictions. i need more addictions. 

i watch tv and listen to the elder of the tribe. the president appears before his subjects to announce a season of revelries. give them bread and circuses. wrestling and coca cola. they want to launch to mars in tin cans. next outpost of the empire. planet of war nomenclature has declared mars silent sixth in the axis of evil; its nascent life being bacterial has deemed it a chemical weapon. 

every square foot of earth is billboard space.  

you patent my cells, my proteins, my genes, my code, my information. you patent me. you kill my air, my trees, my water, my animals, to grant you swifter transit from point to point. you pension off galaxies, flog starlight, privatise deserts, steal my grass and steal my breath. stamp copyright on what is mine by birth in order to sell it back to me. 

you have soiled all in your scramble for the gold of the gods. my path lies with the beasts. 

you expect me to weep for you? 

these they are your children, coming at you with knives.

--------------------------------

Darren Francis writes, makes art, and makes music. He is the author of Spell, Skin, and - in collaboration with Simon Lewis - Jack Palmer & The Unspeakable Thing. He was a member of the legendary industrial band Cubanate in the mid-1990s and has recorded the spoken word albums God Thing and Future Ghosts, and five albums with the band Logos - Gehenna Now, Ascending A Line In The Sky To Sothis, Shamania, Santa Susana Blues, and Everything Under The Sky. For more information please visit www.darrenfrancis.co.uk