Money as Water

MONEY AS WATER
-Kurt Brown

"Cash flow" "liquid assets" "pooling our resources"-
it's clear that money falls from heaven,
drops in pennies, nickels, dimes, to gather
in the small depressions of our hands.
It's clear how profit swells and streams of money
merge, how waves of money move
through nations, cause a "rippling effect"
and soon recede. How some people
drown, while others stay afloat and keep their heads
above the flood. How banks are "bailed out"
like wounded ships and panic follows,
bubbles burst, small investors find it hard
to breathe. It's clear how money
passes through our hands like water,
and our sources, once dried up, leave us
thirsting after more. How funds
diverted, often vanish, and those without a "safety net"
go "belly up." How all we have
goes down the drain, and we get soaked.




The semiotics of this poem are intriguing. Using cliches in poems, which are, by definition, language that is not cliche, serves to draw attention to the language we do use every day. That makes it so that this poem can live in our daily lives, which is something that few poems seem to be able to do. I enjoyed this, as it functions not only as a surrealistic exercise in visualization, but also as a meditation on our economic system.

commuters

When they're shuffling silently at the station, they're barely animated slabs of meat. Only when they talk do they come alive - radios made of flesh tuned to a station I don't know. But I'm reading Bukowski, so I know there are other actual humans out there.

It reminds me of this poem by the St. Lucian poet Kendel Hipployte, from his book Birthright.




ABATTOIR

for human consumption, livestock,
red flesh slashed, hang on hooks

above blood, above rubber boots
which do not feel, above the dumb-shocked

throat-cut carcasses that had baulked
all the way, but still went

the cows, goats, sheep, all decently
drained of their lives

and functionally, dying for a purpose
although, alive, they’d never known it

look hard, feel no remorse:
we crawled out from the ice-age

predators, remember? — this domesticated carnage
is necessary, keeps us going

only, observe sometimes your feet walk
stiffly; sinews in your neck

contract; tendons of your life cringe
as you approach the work-place

inside, observe those heads bowed over desks,
those shoulders hunched, those lowing eyes

so bitterly familiar, observe all those
good functionaries accomplishing their tasks

watch the overhead clock, its blades which slice
deep into the living flesh of hours

but who is the butcher? and what is
the purpose of this systematic sacrifice?