The Flatland is Man's Land.
A song written by Paul Hall in 1980, (c) 1987.
If cities weren't so big, war, terrorism, disease and disasters such as earth quakes wouldn't kill so many people.
This poem addresses the crime of causing so many to crowd into big cities: mercantilism.
Yes. But you may wonder, what crime, mercantilism and what crime, the great cities, that I should label them prisons. It reminds me of the public bathroom in the park, resplendent in it's architecture, closed to the very same desperate public because of vandalism. The crime, therefore, is in the attitude of assumption rather than experiment. Because the latter is always the harder route, but in the end there is less waste, especially of human endeavor.
It is because of the inherent darkness of the human mind. Curious that the highlands, with it's inclusive hardship for punishment, disciplines the child in us therefore enforcing that unspoken etiquette of coexistence whereas the level ground's easy life gives observation of scandal and intrigue.
No one is better than the others; all are vulnerable. But if kindness be noted in an individual, it is duly noted there are mountains in that person's life.
But as for mercantilism, I needn't supply the labels here. History itself bears me out in my protest, that after said mercantilism each time obtained it's freedom it was, virtually immediately in the historic sense, arrested dead in it's tracks, because it abused it's liberty. Stopped by empire and dictatorship, each more ranging and cruel than it's predecessor. And thus the process continues until it reaches an end when once it does attain the global scale. The day shall come when they will have cooked their books for the last time.
The flatland is man's land.
It always has been.
You don't have to look twice
at the mess that it's in.
The people are dying
though they call it "live",
False cultures of money
that have nothing to give
except
blood, sweat and tears, my dear.
Blood, sweat and tears.
Getting rich off your blood
and your sweat
and your tears.
The city system is a whore
that lives off hatred and greed
giving folks what they want, maybe
but not what they need.
Don't look at her wine
when it's red in her cup.
That wine is your blood.
The merchant world
drinks it up.
Blood, sweat and tears, my dear.
Blood, sweat and tears,
getting rich off your blood
and your sweat and your tears.
She's got a pimp, the price gouger:
used deceit for years,
it plays off your hatred
and gets rich off your fears,
just a pimp, a book cooker,
used deceit for years,
getting rich off you blood
and your sweat and your tears.
Blood, sweat and tears, my dear.
Blood, sweat and tears,
getting rich off your blood
and your sweat and your tears.
Oh, you have lived in her bowels
since you don't know when,
but her school never
taught you
how to leave the playpen.
Instead you're taught
how her science
will improve
....the whole world.
It's only turned you
to mutants.
War's abuse
you have hurled.
So, you see,
the flatland is man's land.
It always has been.
You don't have to
look twice
at the mess that it's in.
Blood, sweat and tears,
my dear.
Blood sweat and tears.
Getting rich off your blood
and your sweat
and your tears.
Click here to return to Flowers by a New Hampshire Forrest, Gallery Nine.
Click on any of the following to go there:
Paul A. L. Hall
Copyright © 2003 [Paul Hall]. All rights reserved.
email: poetry@paulhallart.com