— Mahatma Mohandas K. Gandhi
Weapons are the United States premier export
So the right marketing strategy is called for,
And that strategy for its number one product-line
Is war – mindless and endless American war.
It turns out that in Bush’s build-up to Iraq,
All the so-called ‘reasons’ were irrelevant:
The US and the Pentagon were hell-bent on war
And nothing would put them off the scent.
While more than half of every US tax dollar
Which its citizens pay to their government
Goes to the US’s military-industrial complex,
US citizens comply with such arrangements.
The sole escape for a captive, warmongering citizenry
Is to make war upon their own country:
A tough call since the US is a police state
And its democracy’s really a plutocracy –
Whose rash spending of six trillion dollars on war
Over the last four years,
Whilst 1.6 million are homeless and 16 million
undernourished
Displays a dangerous poverty of ideas.
Their country was once founded upon an idea
But US ‘freedom’ now has a hollow ring:
It’s as free as a dying bee with misplaced pride
In its unlovely and redundant sting.
For the last thirty years, sixty percent
Of the US’s national income
Has gone into the pockets of its richest one percent;
Only to be passed onto its privileged children –
Rich kids who jeer at those less fortunate
On their twittering social media,
Betraying passive-aggressive desires to kill them all off
As they record their feelings of hateful hysteria.
‘How are you white and homeless?’ one whines,
‘What a waste of life and opportunity.’
‘I wonder if homeless people go to heaven.
‘I hate the homeless,’ they add with crass insensitivity.
‘I don’t feel sorry for them. If you want change
‘Then let me throw it as hard as I can at your dirty
face.’
‘I hate when it gets cold out,’ another tweets,
‘Cuz then all the homeless people get on the bus.’
‘I did my good deed today,’ chimes a third,
‘I gave some worthless bum a quarter at the mall.’
‘I was enjoying a latte when I almost vomited.
‘Across the street, I saw a hobo girl.’
‘Get back to your side of the bridge. No one likes you.
‘That’s what I wanted to say.’
‘A bum tried fighting me last night cus I told him
to get a job haha’
‘In all honesty, I kinda don’t feel bad for homeless
people.
‘Each individual is in control of their life
‘And future, so it’s all their fault.’
Another vouchsafes, ‘If homeless people
‘Don’t want to freeze to death,
‘Why don’t they just find homes?!
‘I mean DUUUUHHHHHH.’
‘Never understood why homeless people smell of piss
‘When you can literally piss anywhere.’
‘I hate when homeless people expect us to feel sorry for
them
‘We all have the same 24 hrs.
‘What you chose to do with it is up to you.’
‘If home is where the heart is, then are homeless people
heartless?’
‘All homeless bums are loser drug addict drunks.’
‘Maybe if homeless people took care of themselves,
‘Maybe if they looked pretty,
‘We would want to help them more
‘But I don’t help yellow teeth.xxi’
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Homeless advocate Arnold Abbott, 90, was arrested for feeding the homeless in a park (2014).
Photograph: Lynne Sladky/AP
In a country so devoid of a social conscience
Alien objects are ready to fill the vacuum:
Money; guns; dead food; a fetishized military —
All bypass the need for compassion.
In the US the police arrest people for feeding the homeless
And as a result many homeless have died –
They’ve also been used for random target practice
Revealing the heartless nature of the divide.
It’s a country with a neurotic death wish
Whose police kill a thousand a year;
Its mass media peddle the self-promotions
Of an armed pornocracy living in fear.
If that’s not a pre-revolutionary situation
Then it’s hard to know what is one:
Its rich taunt the poor with their limitless wealth;
The poor are sickened by their destitution.
Meanwhile the pollinating honey bee is dying;
Killed off by the greediest nation in history –
Bludgeoning soil with chemical hammers to speed growth
And polluting air to fog the bees’ trajectory.
Name a Radical Film
‘Where any view of Money exists, Art cannot be carried on, but War only’
— William Blake
‘I so hate the rich. I really cannot bear their company... but to raise dosh [to make films] I would have to court the rich.’
— John Berger on why he decided not to pursue a career in filmmaking
Name a radical film.
And now name another.
Now name a few more.
You can’t name many
Because there are very few.
Films cost a fortune
And to produce them
You have to spend time with rich
People with money.
They aren’t radical,
On the whole. That’s why they’re rich.
So, you eat their food,
You gulp down their drinks,
Laugh at their jokes then maybe
Get driven about
In plush SUVs.
Fly to Cannes in their Lear Jets
Then laugh at their jokes.
Again and again.
‘I didn’t tell you that one
Before?’ ‘Oh, no. No…’
‘Right. Shoot. Let’s hear it.
Give me the log-line. The pitch.
One sentence will do.’
The attention span
Of the rich is very short.
They have distractions.
A radical film
Might be an amusing thought
But they’ll draw the line
At paying for
Their world to be destroyed.
Hollywood’s algae,
That clouds the human psyche
And exudes a poisonous gas
Is spawned by tainted cash:
Money that’s laundered
From stocks and shares
In Third World Labour
By beady-eyed gamblers
On commodities;
In other words, on people’s food.
Then bloated by profits
From oil and from arms
The rich think that it might be fun
To sink millions into films:
To buy some glamour,
To acquire some reflected stardust
To sprinkl
e on their trophy wives.
Why do films portray
The lives of the privileged
Disporting their wealth,
Looking alluring,
Physically immaculate,
All bought by money?
Why are criminals
So romanticized in films –
Bonnie and Clyde, and Capone?
Because they’re screen projections
Of the feral rich who are
Backing the business.
‘Let’s see the money
On the screen,’ industry
Bosses boorishly demand,
‘Plus lots of weapons…’
For film bloodbaths
Are PR for the arms trade —
For the MIC, the Military
Industrial Complex.
Which has fingers in every pie,
And he who pays the piper
Calls a profitable tune –
A tune whose repetitious hook-line
Drips blood in perfect time:
‘So let’s please see lashings
Of bone-crushing, flesh-tearing
State-of-the-art long-distance
Thermobaric splatter-guns
And lots of them. Repeat.
Lots and lots and lots of them.
If it bleeds, it leads!’ – Just as
In the newspaper business,
War always trumps peace
And no anti-war film
Gets made unless it can provide
The juiciest gore-fest.
Films serve the system.
Watch the extras on a set,
They’re treated like slaves.
Those in the business
Speak in hushed tones of ‘players’ —
Influential elites,
Hard-nosed bean-counters
Who may ‘play’ but aren’t much fun,
As their antennae
Are tuned to wealth, and
To snorting up the souls
Of those they can exploit
In La La Land’s Californian HQ
Where goodness is no good.
‘Okay, so what’s your pitch –
‘The love lives of the homeless
‘Shot in some tent city?
‘Who’s gonna watch that…?
‘And who are you gonna go to
‘For backing? Campesinos?
‘Peasant farmers? Janitors?
‘Maybe my Mexican gardener?
‘Or my Filipino housemaid?
‘Or my Puerto Rican driver?
‘Or my Haitian bodyguard?
‘Maybe they’ll all back you?
‘Get lost you limey schmuck.’
The stifling algae blooms and
Epiphany fades…
Time spent with the rich
Always means losing your edge,
Somehow or other.
When the Lumière
Brothers produced their first films
In 1895
‘La Poste’ in Paris
Foresaw that, ‘When this device
‘Is available
‘To the French public
‘Everyone will be able
‘To photograph those
‘Who are dear to them.
‘Not just in their immobile
‘Form but also in
‘Their movements, and with
‘Speech on their lips. Then death
‘Will no longer be absolute.’
The very first films of all
Were instantaneously
Latched onto by people
As being something hopeful –
A way of dealing with pain
By assuaging grief
And bettering things.
Instead, millions have been killed
For cinema’s spectator sport
And those in the dark
Like mushrooms, quietly curfewed,
Watch death after death
Whilst La La Land’s territorial,
Egomaniac and bully-boy values
Are judged to be sacrosanct:
‘That’s mine! I’m armed.’
‘This woman is mine.’
‘We’re tooled up and dangerous!’
‘You are history.’
‘Give me the money.’
‘Get your sorry ass out of here.’
‘You’re dead meat.’
Vicious and vengeful scenarios
Devised by dysfunctional nerds
Whom no one would play with at school.
Try to quote any dialogue
That says, ‘Why don’t we share this?’
It’s not how the system works.
Name a radical film
That anaesthetizes war,
Sends money packing,
Has real trees growing
Out of the cinema screen
Bearing tasty fruit
So audiences strip
And become possessed by Pan
Then turn into fauns
Leap into the air…
No, they slink out, glazed and drained,
Blinking like mole rats,
Then shake the dust off their feet,
As if the cinema they’ve just attended
Has sick building syndrome.
What if screens were to vanish?
Everyone would still
See what needed to be done
Without the media
Mediating stuff
Twenty-four frames a second —
Or digitally mincing it all up
Into baby food —
Digestible images
That can usurp life
So that people feel like
They’ve done something
If they’ve just watched
A film about something…
When Lee Harvey Oswald
Shot Kennedy he escaped
From reality
To a movie-house…
He hid in a cinema
To feel more unreal.
The Lion and the Lamb
The Metro Goldwyn Mayer lion was persuaded to roar
Then its head was surrounded by a frame
Reading ‘MGM Trade Mark’ as it was suborned into
serving
Hollywood’s moneyed cult of fame.
It roars to further the reach of the American Empire.
It’s there as the Land of the Free’s sad captive.
Its repetitive abuse serves the Empire’s soft power
Whose magic in close-up isn’t attractive.
There are only twenty thousand lions left alive
Throughout the entire African continent.
Rich American trophy hunters pay to shoot them
Then film themselves looking triumphant.
But when nature’s wildness is anaesthetized
And when its stars are decapitated for sport
Then the transmigration of souls may dictate
That man’s most bestial dragons run riot.
Innocent skies now hide diabolical drones
Randomly targeting those below –
Incinerating them with thermobaric bombs
To snuff out life’s luminous glow.
If there are no more wild Kings of the Jungle,
If mechanized man is now the great ‘I am’ –
True visions of peace and paradise will evaporate
There being no lion to lie down with the lamb.
The President of the United States is Weeping
The President of the United States is weeping:
He’s welling up at the news of the death
Of elementary school kids and college students
Due to callous killers stealing their breath.
Since Sandy Hook in Connecticut in 2012,
When twenty children were shot dead,
There’ve been seventy-four school shootings
Yet the writing on the wall stays unread.
To the Presid
ent such events are inexplicable:
‘How could anyone do such a thing?’
Dim Presidents can cause extreme damage
When the right bells in their brains don’t ring.
Last year, the President was number one —
Number one weapons dealer in the world —
To sign off thirty-six billion dollars of arms sales
It’s essential that your heart be stone cold;
And that your head remain quite oblivious
To your weapons going astray:
For missiles and Humvees end up with ISIS –
Only to attack you one day.
Likewise the kudos and the cash you derive
From your having a militarised mind
Come at a heavy price thanks to karma’s law
Which can bite you hard on the behind.
Your own children can die like the victims
Of those to whom you peddle your toys.
Yet you ensure the income derived from arms
Stifles any and every dissenting noise.
Anyone pointing to the dangers of blowback
Is roundly dismissed as a crank;
Blowback’s ignored because the cries of children
Aren’t able to put money in the bank.
American Porn by Heathcote Williams Page 7