you've never seen everything

nobody's making me say this

i'm talking to you

been travelling 17 hours

irradiated by signals

by images

of viruses

of virtues

like everyone

like exiled angels we swing out of the clouds

above night city

fields of light broken by the curve of dark waterways

on the other side of the world

an unhappy teenage girl sets fire

to herself

her house

her neighbourhood and some that dwell therein

sorry simulacrum of sad dawn

you've never seen everything

sleep of the just

sleep of reason

any damn kind of sleep please!

i'm trying to balance on a sloping bed in naples

or is it skopje? i forget

through the thin hotel wall a man groans in his dreams

and on the other side of the world

the drug squad busts a child's birthday party

puts bullets in the family dog and the blood goes all over the baby

and the mounties are strip-searching schoolgirls

because they can

and a car crashes and burns on an offramp from the gardiner

two dogs in the back seat die

and in the front

a man and his mother

forensics reveals the lady has pitchfork wounds in her chest

pitchfork!

and that the same or a similar instrument has been screwed to the dash

to make sure the driver goes too

you've never seen everything

i see

a leader of the people with a ring in his nose

and the leaders of business tell him which way to go

with tugs on the golden chain which once led the golden calf

and we're supposed to be impressed with their success

but my mind goes blank before the unbelievable indifference

shown life

spirit

the future

anything green

anything just

bad pressure coming down

tears

what we really traffic in

ride the ribbon of shadow

never feel the light falling all around

years ago when my brother was in india

a small town baker got a bright idea

he cut his flour with pesticide

and sent a bunch of neighbours on their longest journey

he was just being cheap

trying to make a profit

didn't even have shareholders to answer to

but it's worth remembering

as we sell off the forest

gene-splice the world's food into an instrument of control

maim and destroy as acts of theater

what came next

that when the survivors looked around

and understood what had been done

they butchered

that baker

snow swirls in the parking lot light like flour

like pesticide there's a trade war brewing

or at least that's the face they paint on it

but it's only more transnational manipulation

it's all bad magic and gangrene politics

hormone disruptors and carcinogenetics

greed twists eternal in the human breast

but the market has no brain

it doesn't love it's not god

all it knows is the price of lunch

here i sit

staring at my own shadow

feeling my blood move

trying not to have a drink

trying to find somewhere to put the rage i'm carrying

bad pressure coming down

tears

what we really traffic in

ride the ribbon of shadow

never feel the light falling all around

never feel the light falling all around

you've never seen everything