Dead Peasants

[Teratogen]

Dead Peasants

They built a dam on the Wall Street Casino
To keep all the gamblers and hustlers in,
And it just goes to show you how much we know
About the chances we all have to win.

They say you’ve got to be in it to win it:
How convenient if you have got the time
When ev’ry dollar earn’d is in a minute
Seiz’d out of ev’ry spent and squander’d dime.

Sold down the river to the highest bidder,
No more, they say, will the cash flow combine
With the sea of poverty they consider
Mere peasants so defin’d to tow the line—

No huddl’d masses rise in waves to rally,
No waterfall of wealth to trickle down,
No irrigation to the fruitless valley
Of these forsaken Dreams they seem to drown.

They built a garden ‘round the Tree of Congress
Of whose branches have been heavily shorn,
Where the seeds they plant will line all the pockets
Of the soil’d lobbyists that they adorn,

Where the weeds grow up all around the roses
And the roses grow up where there is sun,
Where what the corp’rate cloud surely knows is
There just can’t be a rose for ev’ryone.

On such derivative they pretend to give
A promise that they won’t deregulate—
Still we are searching for that place to live,
Still denied entry at the garden gate.

Ah, but who will protect us from the blizzard?
And who will fix that broken aqueduct?
The storm has come and we are growing wither’d:
If they neglect us now then we are fuck’d.

Rulers of the underworld, gods of the dead,
From your throne rephrase the economy:
Hell hath risen from the dried-up riverbed
To dictate this pending Plutocracy:

Tap your soul equity and then refinance
With the home loan mafia that hereby
Claims royalties upon net-worth subsidence
As such Terms and Conditions will apply.

If you can increase the value of the stock
For the services render’d in your name,
Just hijack the gospel, congregate the flock:
The meek shall inherit a world of pain.

This commodity of fear is all about
The dividends life pays on commission,
But the peasants might revolt if they find out
Life is a pre-existing condition.

The last shall be first and the first shall be last
To reap benefits from this reservoir
And sow the seed of greed (crimes that will forecast
Blessings to the rich, woe unto the poor);

But the dam is weak and soon it will shatter
And the earth will be enrich’d with your blood,
And your cries for help will not even matter
When the bailout fails to withdraw the flood.

Oh, but if the faithful hand of the living
Does not desert the hand of the dying,
Then perhaps we could consider forgiving
Ten thousand years suffer’d from your lying.

Until that day comes just convince the victims
This institution is all they have got:
Sign the dotted line that praises the system
In the contracts where these dead peasants rot!