Iconophagy

On such a green day as this,

with stock-tickers tall like blades of grass,

who could think of apocalypse?

With the women standing still in their long skirts,

With the tractors idling sinfully in their fields,

Isn’t it grand: Beauty in the eye of the shareholder?

And hasn’t it taken the place of our beautiful harvests:

This method of creating value

Hand over fist over empty hand, empty fist,

Such that we dispose of acres and acres of fruit and harvest,

Such that we maintain the precious price of produce.

Here’s how we prop ourselves on stilts like the carnies at our county fair,

Here’s how we know that nothing is real like the joy we will take in watching it burn.

Here’s what they give us: An initial offering to the public, disgracefully,

Of nothing but subsistence and dry well-wishes.

Well, we got ourselves this far,

With such green pastures as these,

And having neglected our fields for so long,

We see it means nothing that our idols stand tall among men.

Stand tall, then, among our barren stalks of wheat,

And offer your icons as effigies!

Tell us how the papacy is bullish on a token:

His token stands for disgrace, apocalypse,

Burning, dissolution, fields emptied by some distant omnipotent CEO

Demanding that prices remain high and fields remain frozen.

Here’s how our land’s ripened fruit goes rotten:

In such green pastures as these, you dared to waste the earth.

You deserve the barren fields, the dropping stocks, the plummeting value.

You burned the fields for your effigies; you idolized wrong.