Drying the Tears of Liberation

Triketora, how many pins and tweets
Before the Goddess, delivers fire
Unto men, the smug white man
Little things their God had forgot
Glory is not for all, the riches are for the few
“Alleluia! Alleluia!” Where did
Equality go, in this world where
One quarter of Millennials will
Not be married and the coming automation
Will mean less jobs, less opportunity

Triketora, my heart is broken for
Those fired from Yelp, the victims of the Medium
I read their stories every day
I listen for voices of the minority
I read for their script of authenticity
But we are all stepping-stones to dust
Where I look to India for tech disruption
Where there are no holy ghosts to hold the future down
That’s Durga with a smile, Trike
That’s California falls into the Sea
When the little women rebel, the coders
Breaking the lie that we were told.

Wrinkles on our dreams

Wrinkles on our dreams

I woke with marble in my hands
What does it mean?
I am descendent of centuries
Not independent, not autonomous

I am a falling into dreams
Of generations and pupils of elders
It would be very difficult
To think of myself as separate

I inherit euro-centric bias
And I take part unwittingly in patriarchy
I live in an economic simulation
What does this mean?

It means reality is not culture
Social conditions is only a layer
Of existence, my hands disappear
In my dreams, for I know my ancestors

Committed murder, waged false wars
So a few could profit
And the many would remain slaves
Feudalism never died, it only

Masked itself in a homogenous
Globalization of pretend liberties
I wake up with dreams of my own
That I’ve likely been programmed for

My desires are the software
And I am the obedient application
I labour, I do what I am told
How can I innovate in a world

In a world where strangers
Are competitors and scarcity
Is a growing concern of failing economies
I haven’t seen myself in the mirror
Where has my soul gone to visit?

Too poor for activism

Too poor for activism

Pretty words are not enough
They were never enough
Sometimes, they were just
All we had, without actions
————————————

Like cowards, we wrote
We tripped on beauty
Lyrical, sweet, like pretty
Necklaces of lace lit

By the lanterns of our moons
We cherished our pretty nothings
Calling them precious, we
Stood in our own myths

Self-aware of ourselves only
As the center in our own game
We crafted what we could
On Earth, like a soul on a mission

Pretty words are never enough
Revolutions are rare and bloody
For the majority of people
Have no courage, no true inspiration

To fight or stand up
For what they believe in
We are all watered down
Moderates, shy to go against the norms

Where women are raped in India
Where women are hit in Mexico
And women are killed for family honour
In many places where marriages are arranged

And here, where the internet
Is being monitored and our privacy
Is evaporating in regulations
Of the firm resolve of a police-state
That likes to call itself a democracy.

What went wrong with capitalism

yesterday I heard a preacher of truths
otherwise known as “advertisements”
they are everywhere

stand in my way
the speak to me in personalized
machine-learning pitches

but they don’t feel biological anxiety
I really don’t care about
the latest car or clothes

I’d prefer to think about injustice
inequality, racism, intolerance, sexism
actual human truths and problems

how happy the man must be right?
who can contemplate the
unhappiness of others

or does altruism and activism
no matter how insignificant my impact
make me feel better somehow?

I who cannot be cursed from the outside
since I am poor, ugly, unpopular
having nothing, owning nothing

being anonymous, I can ignore
the better part of capitalism
gluttony, profit-memes, exploits
of privilege and status

abuse of power, corruption
and mental hoopla taken for granted
that’s why, in a word
I could never live in America.

Psalm 10 – Politics

I will praise thee, O Lord
Not for the fair world
Thou hast created, making
Man rule over women

Making one kind of a man
Richer than another, not for
How docile your creation is to
One species, which plunders

For the cheap profit of a few
Decades, what nature took
Millions of years to create –
I will observe how change will fix

This Era of its doom, its politics
Of heathens, mine enemies have
Wallets, they have bought power
They possess superiority

I will sing praise to thy name, Selah.
Even in the darkness, I will find
A way to feel the light
Not because this world is fair

Or that there are many Good men left?
For all creations come to an end
And some cities in peace, still perish
In the game beneath the stars

But the Lord shall endure forever
Like nature, like love, and some remember him
Who may or not be our descendants
It does not matter to me, history

Will always be determined by
The new masters, and masters
Rarely have an objectivity of truth
That might reveal their former wickedness.

Psalm 9 – The Violence

O Lord, how forgiveness
Frees us from the past
And acceptance, empties us of
Traumatic memories, it is ordained

That our fate should have
Highs and lows, though there is
Always somehow the feeling
Of something like the presence of God

Or the potential for angels
And the proximity of nature
Or the caress of silence
And the quantum dominion of

Powers we cannot fully understand
The prophecy of secrets
And the workings of the invisible
But the beasts in the field play

Just as Man does his part to acquire
To mate, to make war and steal the
Lot of his neighbor, to overcome
His own fears and insecurities

And profit, in the trials of others
Let it not be said we are better
Than animals, for I have seen
Man in all his glory and vanity

And even the most intelligent men
Were better villains than in the stories
And Man killed exceptionally well
Even in his more mature wisdom.

Psalm 8 – Capitalism

O Lord my God, let me not say
Let me not lie, “my God is best”
For each values experience uniquely
Selah. How many Gods have we

Invented? Rending to piece the idols
Of other gods, for our own
Cherished idols? We might worship
Money, but even the God of the

Marketplace, becomes false with debt
The Lord shall judge the people
The Nations shall suffer their karma
The Americas shall be torn apart

O Lord, let it not be said we were
Good Christians, praising only our
Version of right, our emblems of patriotism
Let it be known, we were also cruel

Unfair, corrupt, as any other Masters
That Lorded over other men, that filled
The realms with images of our likeness
Making the world love money, like we did

Capitalism was the plague that we proliferated
We rewarded evil, until the corporations
Became the high priests of our home countries
Feudal, full of disdain for the common people

Barons, full of spite for justice or freedom
O Lord, in thine anger, if though shall destroy
Parts of this world in thy holy crusade
Let history show the white man
Persecuted others to be like him.

The Tendency to Have

Capitalism is the astounding belief that the most wickedest of men will do the most wickedest of things for the greatest good of everyone.
~ John Maynard Keynes

Photo Courtesy: http://www.deviantart.com/art/Sophi-473092630

God is in a mood
to bring you poverty today
so you might notice what truly

has a tendency to shine in darkness?
God is in a mood
for the world to change
more than a little bit today

so learn to not be so attached
to the temporary life you have created
in fact, it has been gifted to you

you drink water owning that water
you taste milk from beasts enslaved by you
you eat meat of slaughtered creatures
you drink wine by another grape-picker

all that you do is a result of commerce
but you take more than you give
God is in a mood

to let you know you are all interconnected
this is the new campfire song
in the dream of the internet
virtual telepathy reminded you
of the unity of our ancestors

in cities and countries that were
not made to last forever
for God is in a mood

to plunder your riches
the riches of nature since you have
become increasingly as myths unto yourselves

with a tendency to forget how to love
the creation given to you freely
weren’t you born to experience
different moods of God
new flavors of nature, you have awoken

your cybernetic children who shall inherit
a bit of your errors, your embarrassing
adolescent of industrial and market disgrace.

MAN

I shut mine eyes and all the world drops dead
Though gold and silver they never die
Life goes on waltzing with stars yellow and red

Till the dreams run moon-struck
And creation whispers overhead
(I think I made you up inside my head)

Where the oceans rise and forests burn
And planets are corrupted for a few centuries
By Man the destroyer, cities of shame

Where nature hangs her head in civil disobedience
And machines calculate how to
Win back her trust, before it’s too late

I think evolution outperformed God
To make such an arrogant creature as Man.

COMFORT IN THE IDEA OF GOD OR GOOD

i

Beginning my studies on the first world
Which I had been born, I looked to you
To teach me and greet me with Love

ii

That famous biography we both read
The Truth, of evolution and beginnings
God wasn’t something that came
To our minds naturally, we believed we believed

iii

In Him, like so many other artificial
Dead clarities, fictions invented by men
Like the need for war, dominance, superiority, patriotism

iv

I gave in to sense, to the consciousness in forms
To eyesight, appreciation of beauty
Imagination with music, hearing faith

v

In the sound of the rain, or the
Faint clues of why we had been born
So recently, into such a Chaotic order

vi

These objects of reward, and punishment were
Primal, the dopamine-switch inherently misguided
Anarchic, appearing at intervals of pleasure
The signal of ecstatic songs, the faces preferred
It all seemed a breach of our inherent liberty

vii

The idea that we were free, attachment was necessarily
A device of the character, the role, the animal
Not the soul or anything particularly noteworthy.

Patriarchy in Exile

It is not doom we fear, nor extinction
We live for the brilliant present day –
Erected as if for the first time, we
Are built to survive, endure, come home to find

How our colossal steps keep us dreaming
There is no permanent haunt, we know
How to move on, forwards, afterwards
Adapt, before we fall, as we reclaim

The living bronze of another golden day
Even from futility, we have resilience
In the form of youth, and immortality –
All we find are changing altars

Alternate futures scrawled in time-machines
There is only the riddle of collective ignorance
The bribery of the profit motive of the illegitimate
That strive for supremacy, not love

It is not testosterone that makes us strong
Selfishness and vanity move us only so far.

Photo Courtesy: http://www.deviantart.com/art/CUBOZOA-III-393220443