Philosophy
of the Discount
Money off the original price
means no product maintains a royal
status.
All can be brought down
to the level of the commoner.
But there are Rolls Royce limits.
Each product owns a price point
that functions as its horizon line.
To exceed it is to cause sticker
shock.
To retreat from it is to be cast
from the land of profit
into the outer darkness of lost
investment.
That an economy has a soul is an
illusion—
a function of the stories it tells
itself
so as to appear coherent.
Though it coheres to only a tiny
cohort,
it preaches universal access
to avoid the collapse of democratic
credibility.
The discount, not a sentient being
itself,
pays no heed to such tales.
It constructs rebel enclaves called
Dollar Stores
and relentlessly subsumes brand
image.
Like the Borg in Star Trek,
it burrows into marketing
intelligence,
devouring brand narratives and
ontologies,
relentlessly undermining
differentiation
until the once celebrated
cornucopia
devolves into a colorless blur.
Motivated by the terror of the
indistinct,
new technologies are born to
relieve boredom.
To make up for lost time initially
they gouge and plunder,
until they are replicated beyond
difference.
At which point they compete by
price
and the cycle begins again.
The Authoritarian Century
“The owl of Minerva flies
only at dusk.”
—Hegel
When it happened, people were saying it hadn’t;
now that it’s easing up,
they’re saying that it has.
We must forgive the owl,
Minerva and history itself
for arriving late to the
catastrophe. It takes time
to realize you’ve been hit
in the head with a bat.
At first, you just see
flashbulbs.
Or when you’re in a car
wreck.
You awaken from a blackout that
followed a wild brightness.
You see broken glass and
hear cries. They shine a light
in the window, saying “this
one’s dead; leave him for later.”
You shout, “no, no, I’m
alive.”
And you start to remember
your name.
Society Must Be Defended
from this poem. Its
inconsequence is a problem.
A problem Society doesn’t
know about.
Problems known, as we all
know (don’t we?)
can be harvested, like souls
in need of repentance.
But the uncounted are worse
than the uncooperative.
They are likely to increase
or disorganize
the way of all flesh if
allowed to bask
on their undiscovered
beaches. Many unknowns
are out there. They are, in
fact, known as “the many.”
The only traces they leave
are something like black holes.
You know you see something,
but on closer inspection,
you’re just gazing at
absence. No one blames you
for looking away. After a
while, all social space
seems more and more empty.
That it goes on
like this for infinity.
Scary. But not to worry.
Authorities assure us this
too must end.
Color
My World
Like a line drawing of an
orchard
to which you bring your own
crayons
but when you arrive at the
page in the coloring book
discover that it’s already
colored in
and in the colors you’d
expect,
it’s hard to discern what
causes the ordinary order.
Was it you who made the page
the way it is?
Did something guide your
hand?
Was it comforting that way?
Hitchcock claimed the movie
Topaz
was an experiment in in
yellow, white and red
to determine if a color
scheme
could influence the plot.
He decided that it did not,
but maybe he was wrong about
his wrongness.
Doesn’t the streetlight
order traffic
into the plot of green,
yellow and red?
“You go to my head”
Bryan Ferry sang in 1983
on the Let’s Stick
Together album.
The cover of these cover
versions was ordered
by his white suit, blue
shirt and black hair.
It stares out from the past,
an order now overcome
by the coloring book of the
next era:
you could dress like that
today
and it might mean tearing
apart
instead of sticking together
like the color red
which once meant left wing
and now means right.
It’s as if red was in a
fight with itself.
It’s like the universal
trying on one particular
after another
as if reality were a
collection of hats.
You’d think after a while it
would realize
it doesn’t look good in hats
anymore,
but history might find that
revolting.
Vitamin Sea
The health food store reveals
itself
for what it was all along: a
vitamin shop.
Merchant of condensed wellness
an astronaut feast
in all the colors
that the laws of advanced data
analysis
have decreed.
As you are guided through these
grocery aisles of supplements
you learn the necessity of the add
on:
busy people can’t eat farms.
Attuned to this forum of
ingredients they are led
into a chalky future of muscular
promise.
At the counter as you pay
they match your phone number
to the savings cult
to which you were granted
membership.
Like all secret societies it
promises enhanced powers.
Think of the ads in the back of
arcane comics—
the kind and fit always triumph
over the crude bodies of coercion
who initially torment them.
Learn to play the long game
supplemental wisdom declares
become a tortoise with a
magnificent shell.
Anti-Ode: Huckleberry Hound
Big smiling blue dog with a
phony Southern drawl
Who tipped a yellow straw
hat with a corny mischievous look
Who tried to be a dog
catcher, a medieval knight, a gladiator and rocket scientist
I don’t remember much of
your dumb cartoons
But I remember trying to
like them
So you are a forced laugh
An awkward mental handshake
Like when you meet a
business connection at a convention
Someone you’re supposed to
get next to
And can’t think of what to
say
And yet can’t get away
And the connection keeps
talking about what you’re supposed to be interested in
And you fight your face
against exposing your boredom
Down with Huckleberry Hound!
Down with Saturday morning
cartoons!
Down with the idea that when
you’re a child you should think like a child
And be enraptured by a
stupid blue dog
And the thousand screaming
commercials that chase its tail
Unlike the dog catcher
Huckleberry Hound unsuccessfully portrayed in a mind-numbingly
boring episode
In the new world no longer
shall we teach children to emulate their captors!
In the new world they shall
turn the tables on these monsters!
All power to the Children’s
Revolutionary Cartoon Network!
All power to the Children’s
Revolutionary Ad Agency!
Down with capitalist running
dogs such as Huckleberry Hound.
May they turn back into the
rectangles from which they were drawn!
