Sunday September 28, 2001
10:00 AM
 

Expansion Contraction
 

The Nasdaq is down
Terrorism is up.

We do need a god.
First it was medicine
Then the science of computers.
It became the market itself
Climbing ever higher
In a direct ascent into the heavens.
We followed it in awe
Of a new age.

Boom Boom
Low tech brought it down.
Once more
The pendulum has swung.

And what of the Arabian pendulum?
Shepherds to Billionaires
In one generation.
Mecca to Modernism
And back again.

Ascetics who prize water
And loyalty
Living in the shadow,
In denial,
Of oil derricks, smoke stacks,
Jets and skyscrapers.

A culture which despises
The material world
Made the richest on earth.
Boom Boom
Take it down.

The power to do anything
But the inability to
Conceive of it.
Only sand, the hunt,
And brotherhood.

Two million people
Circle seven times
A black rock.
Kiss it.
Mohammed did.

Happy and strong
In the joy of nothing
For millenia.
The moment of oil
Like a bomb
Sends waves of fear
Discontent and doubt
Through Arabia.

Terror of the future
Which irradicates the past.
No time to conceive of
A wealthy beneficent role
For Arabian money.
These anti-materialists
Should de-salinate
The Red Sea, the Arabian Sea,
The Perisan Gulf.
Irrigate.
Feed the Afghans.

Instead, denial.
Boom Boom.
Blast to the past.

(c) anonymous go***ss  9.23.01