An Old Lover Pledges His Devotion to Capitalism….
Again Jesus came down to our prison
and again he got shanked; again in the empty
vault we found no body, no God’s rank
smell, but capitalism only, only you, my love,
only you, patron of things to come,
patron of pimps and inventors, church builder,
collector of countries and forests, stitcher of the broken
hymen, you with your ear for disaster
and your tongue made of luck, you sealing
the peace with a sale of planes, you
with your face cream factories and dick-
growing pills, you pushing up the price
of milk and honey, you forever
horny, making the wind hot, you growler in the empty
stomach, you with diamonds
and viruses in your hair, you convulsing
in the fattened heart…It’s not true,
it’s not true, what they say about
you, I know that now, now that I know
how now tastes here where
tomorrow presses down like your jangling foot
on our chests. And if in the trembling city
a capitalist sneaks out some noon to get whipped
till he can’t sit down, to sob, to beg to kiss the bottom
of his Mistress’s shoe, cash is still the safe word
that delivers him from evil.
If, trading hard at his stand up desk that afternoon,
he bankrupts his company, Capitalism, it’s not your fault.
That’s human nature, straining beyond itself.
If Security escorts his ex-employees from the building,
you can’t be blamed. It’s misfortune,
which follows people everywhere. I, too,
want to testify that the guillotine
was not your fault, that when slave ships
moved upon the face of the waters, it wasn’t you,
it was cupidity and pride–
the deadly sin that Satan breathed
into Eve’s perfect heart.
But Capitalism, my love, it wasn’t you.
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Mike Steve Collins has published poems in The Rupture, About Place, The American Journal of Poetry, New Letters, Callaloo, Möbius, The Best American Poetry 2003, and elsewhere. His poem “‘Tight Like This,’ recorded 1928, Chicago, Illinois” was a finalist for the 2020 Best of the Net Anthology.
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Stone Poetry Quarterly 