

"... Ruined now by flame that burned of want and hope..."
Narcissus, Caravaggio
I.
Monopolies, whether of ideas, the mind, politics, business, or of the economic type, achieve their monopolistic position first through an acute sensitivity to the energetic inefficiencies that exist in themselves and their opponents, and then through a relentless drive to eliminate such inefficiencies so that any perceived waste may be precluded in all future activity, a process synonymized with “productivity”.
In time, however, this productive bias is used to justify the slaughter of every course of action that may be deemed superfluous, luxurious, or inessential, preventing the vital soil of new ideas from ever coming into constructive being, those which are the sole remedies that might forestall a monopoly’s calcification, decay, death, and eventual overthrow.
II.
“Children in the Flesh”
Seared in me
to black this heart
of tenderness and warmth
to world of chance that seemed perchance to
lock our progeny in berth.
Ruined now by flame that burned of want and hope
and charred, distaste,
of all that may have pleased the earth
and it to me,
now joint-despised
and fled of blood
that could have partialed us to we.
Impartial thus to gain and loss,
as strangers only be
to life within that seethes the breast
and passes lone unmoved, unflinched, unseen.
III.
“The Heart that Hates the Carriage”
The great deceit of sapping fang
and bleeding bane of self-ish hate
and loathing soul is fruit that feeds
Narcissus’ ghost
who quarries pools-reflecting nearest thee
and only thee.
Despite the foul, the poisoned glance,
he can’t resist the waters-drown
like leaden weight
to foul his soul
and taint his deeds to futures good and maybe great
the heart that hates the carriage of its lowly gates.
IV.
Why am I, cruel heavens,
forced to eat the things
I think and feel around the breast,
both false and true,
to live off them
as if a boon to world and soul, to me and also you?
If twice bestowed a choice in this,
deny this curse which as of yet
remains a curse
until the day it’s saved by walls of
another’s joyful verse.