fishbicycle

The Hope Diamond
is cursed, not a girl's best friend but
deepest enemy. Our Lady's kidney
stones under hostile takeover, facets
the funhouse mirrors of your trance. Sister
what be you
thinking, athrash and agroan in your
dreamstarved tower? Are not my lips hung
above, a spark from your nightmare bolting
to flight? Return each breath, else we
cease. Back am I
bent, spines of a million miners
broken, tongue rounded
by drought, skin a salt flat.

Two months' salary. Is that so much
to spend on the one you love?
Three billion years
in carbon chains, then beast
at liberty, pursuing happiness. Sinew
from limb the dozers peel, inbred
cartels snakeoiling romance with
a junkie's nodding license. The rape
fettered to your finger. Not a one
of us is married
yet. To wed your own creation is to
live
reversed. Fling away your shields
like saucers and hallucinate my mouth.

Every switched light, every
nibble is someone else's agony. Oh sister
still the screams. Only we are unfinished.
Your kiss Creation awaits.
There is nothing to possess, no one
to own. These feet and hands
are bound, mouth sewn shut
like a bruja�s lizard. Throw the Witch
and her rings of power
into the oven, else
this War never ends.

On All Souls' Day I stole prayer
candles from Wal-Mart for you.
At the checkout a girl returning a
Little Mermaid costume coughed
your name into her fist, four
times, rubbed her swollen eyes.
She mounted
a bike and pedaled away, looking back.

I offer no bargains, no sales, no ego
promenades down flowered aisles. Divorce
matter�s perfect addiction and leave
the dragon its hoard. I am wine, you
are daybread. With nothing
on hand or in pocket
our future is made. Throw off the
comforter of evil
dreams and open
to my kiss. Wake up! Get up!
Hurry!!
At dawn I will turn
into only
a man.

Even in Heaven his looks and thoughts
were always downward bent,
admiring more
the riches of Heaven's pavement,
trodden gold,
than aught divine or holy else enjoyed
In vision beautific: by him first
men also, and by his suggestion taught,
ransacked the centre, and with impious hands
rifled the bowels of their Mother Earth
for treasures better hid.

-- Milton, describing Mammon
in Paradise Lost

The guiding spirit of modern science, according to Goethe's Faust, is a satanic demon, a fallen angel named Mephistopheles.

Now Goethe had his angels a bit confused, but the sentiment is spot on.

In our mind Mephistopheles is kin to Mammon, the figure in Paradise Lost who personifies commercial greed.

Keynes would say that what we have is a supply/demand dilemma. But De Beers is not going to cap the pits.

The way to solve this problem is to flatten the demand curve. We hope our Economics professor is suitably impressed. Let's throw him from the Rainbow Bridge.