eleven thousand dogs

Eleven thousand dogs shitting
on a clean white beach;
hamsters clawing at formulae
on blackboards.
People in haz-mat suits
in vats of mayonnaise, squirming;
a tickertape parade
of dead moths.

This is how it feels
to know what we know:
markets bring wage work,
steady diets, more babies,
rising food prices,
-- oh. Oh dear. Dead babies.

Its cloudy with a chance of meatballs
in rich countries.
Huge donuts run down pedestrians,
pancakes bury houses,
farm lobbyists corner congressmen.
Our bodies stifle us.

Take a walk with
a dead baby.
Its hair whispers. Its toes snap.
Its fingers won’t clasp
your finger
it won’t snuggle
to your neck.
You’ll want to
throw it away,
gag, cry,
cover yourself with dirt
scrub yourself raw.

But you’ll get used to
eleven pounds of
good eatin’.
You’ll hide it
with the right shirts.

Your gut is the dead
baby, acquired at Ruby Tuesdays
on two for one nights.
The extra you ate is what it
didn’t, on the other side of the market,
‘til it died. It nestles
around your middle,
mindless infertile blob,
sucked from its mother far away,
subsumed to you,
never to be born.

Worms fill a
crispy beer-battered
destroyer;
eleven thousand dogs
wolf salmon
off a marble floor.

A market is an efficient system
of signals, they say.
Manson’s brain
transmitted accurate signals
of the horrors
committed.