The Shaving Mill

From wretched masses you seek refuge
They'd but drudgery to fill their days
But living behind your tall iron fence
Indeed you're a greater slave than they

Reaction is inevitable
It has happened in every age
Desperation builds till it explodes
To free you from your gilded cage

Without mysticism you supposed
there would be no day of reckoning
Mob judged by their own unwritten code
Now cruel harvester is beckoning

They built this shaving mill
to execute the people's will
Now heads roll and blood spill
Runoff from the shaving mill

Mankind works by the laws of nature
The mob ungulates like waves from heat
But this is no mirage before you
as you trudge forward on tired feet

Jeers descend from ev'ry direction
So many years they stored up their hate
To be an object of mockery
Was their lot; now it's become your fate

Without mysticism you supposed
there would be no day of reckoning
Mob judged by their own unwritten code
Now cruel harvester is beckoning

They built this shaving mill
to execute the people's will
Now heads roll and blood spill
Runoff from the shaving mill

In fevered sweat violently awake
Just a dream was your reckoning day
Perhaps time left to build your police state
but it's easier to change your ways

Angel of Death

To Earth we fell
to reap it well
took an Eden
Rendered it to hell

We made up reasons
to give up innocence
So clean and sterile
that nothing lives within

Angel of Death
I see his face in the mirror
Couldn't see before
but the my vision looms clearer

We tried new orders
In myth we have reveled
Search for something more
on the quantum level

Where's this soul
Where's goodness of heart
Shining beacon light
We split atoms apart

Angel of Death
I see his face in the mirror
The vision is plain
Mission completion is nearer

We comfort ourselves
with elaborate lies
Pretend there's a light
we can't see with our eyes

Separate from the beasts
In evil we found meaning
Civilization our name
for entropy increasing

Angel of Death
your only power's decision
now that the vision is plain
time to abandon your mission

The Outer Darkness

Don't trust the commercial lie that its controversial
We were born morally upright even from the very start
As highly evolved mammals, we're empathic animals
One might say that nature's law was written upon our hearts

Until a few random defects spawned the odd psychopath
Hatched civilization as so many sinister plots
Took advantage of innocence, taught pack intolerance
nurture passed down misanthropy until love was forgot

Superstition burning behind an impregnable door
Powering the engine for unconscionable horror
Their machine separated mankind on it's threshing floor
When it broke the common bond they called the product war
a cacophony rising up as gears churn out the gore
Why must those teeth keep gnashing evermore!?!

It came to the attention of those who pulled the levers
That even superstition left bonds that need be severed
To thresh them more thoroughly they needed turn the tables
Infused superstition with egotistical fables

Dropped just enough crumbs to entice a clamor for status
saddled us with weight of the world, then said "call me Atlas!"
For the cost of your life you you might ascend one rung of rank
If you enjoy life perpetually guarding your flank

Lustful hubris burned behind a brightly glowing red door
Boiling the steam for their unimaginable horror
To exchange devalued beings upon their trading floor
Ever pitting man against man and wagered on the score
A cacophony rising up as gears ground down the poor
Why must those teeth keep gnashing evermore!?!

Chemicals helped keep the moving parts lubricated
Because even cogs had consciences to be placated
To turn a deaf ear as spilled blood cried out remonstrances
So that we might pretend not to all be accomplices

As machinery aged, fear and greed were not still sufficient
They found incendiaries volatile but efficient
Eventually the machine couldn't handle the stress
Cogs fell apart amid an unrecognizable mess

The inferno spread outward unrestrained by the great door
Science foretold plainly that indescribable horror
Warnings issued in vain for mere cogs were bound to ignore
Ashes fell from the sky and creosote lapped at the shore
Night and day became blackness like never before
At least those teeth aren't gnashing.. anymore...

Death by Misadventure

Hanging about in the graveyard of empires
We start to wonder how we got here.
It happened through adventurism.
And public apathy in the face of fear.

Our taxes went to training the zealots
On the plains of Afghanistan
Even the one called the Ace of Spades
In those days he was our man

The enemy of our enemy
Was our friend, we were seeing red
Years later that adventurism
Left thousands in lower Manhattan dead.

Death... by misadventure
Self infliction is tragedy
Death by misadventure
Another lesson for history

After adventurism burned us
Nothing left to do but double down
Another bad friend from the eighties
Season ripe to reap what we'd sown

We fought for freedom of the Iraqi people
Shiites to cut their sons on the head
Kurds free to circumcise their daughters
With just hundreds of thousands left dead

Death... by misadventure
Decider created anarchy
Death by misadventure
Another lesson for history

After many years of adventure
There is trouble down at treasury
Debt piled up like stockpiles of swords
When what's wanting are plowshares and seed

Seems the experiment's come full circle
From the blood of the Bourbon king
Whose adventurism sealed his demise
And gave birth to this murderous spree

The Decade of Decalogue

 (A remembrance of the ideas that characterized the mid 1990's through the mid 2000's)

Come with us and worship the Lord of Hosts they say
We meet here before class every morning to pray
But don't stop to read what the scriptures really say
Like lord's order: wipe out the Amalekite race
Kill the men, women, children, and even wee babes
What could a moral person do but recoil in shock
No Lord of Hosts, but instead lord of holocausts

I'm the gov'nor of Texas, won'cha vote for me
I reckon we share a sense of morality
We both know earth's been 'round but 60 centuries
We'll invade Babylon to fulfill prophecy
I know during my life the world will cease to be
Since the end is near, there's no need to count the cost
For waging war pleases the lord of holocausts

Elect those for democracy's usurpation
Because this world must be one of domination
For scripture tells that there must be a tribulation
to winnow the grain, from that chaff which must be burnt
Multitudes will suffer fates we equally earnt
We'll be saved for serving as apologists ought
Tried to warn others about the lord of holocausts

We await the day the sun be turned to darkness
waiting anxiously till the moon be turned to blood
humanity will be tread as in a winepress
with gladness we wait, for the terrible day of the Lord

Market Day

Inspired by an account of what happened to a Guatemalan village during the 1980's.


Soldiers came into town
on their Market Day
Freedom fighters for the
American way
Set fire to all of their
fields of standing grain
Took the men and boys out
and blew them away
Next for women and girls
after they had their way
sent them down the village well
to a mass grave

There was no black or white back then
against red, all turned to gray
we wrote out the invoice and
left the innocent to pay
The sad truth is we sold them out
...on market day


To secretly fund the thugs
who embraced our side
a monopoly for drugs
tangling webs grew wide
Evil empires have to tell
their own people lies
like scandalous gangsters
exchanging drive-bys
collateral damage mounted
how many lost lives?
maybe even God lost count
if our stars aligned!

There was no black or white back then
against red, all turned to gray
we wrote out the invoice and
left the innocent to pay
The sad truth is we sold them out
...on market day

Governmentalities

In understanding those grave powers that are not unique to the State, it may be helpful to examine the earliest forms of government. 

One or a few families formed tribes so that the deadly force of the whole would protect their fellows from one another, and from outside threats. This was the first form of governmentality.

Men came to swear oaths to one another, so boundaries were recognized along with the resources therein.  And the society became bound to defend boundaries from threats as if defending the individual himself, and this became and extension of the first governmentality, though still requiring the consent of the whole, not yet another governmentality itself.

Tribes typically adopted a set of beliefs in order to explain the world around them, and some tribes adopted a hierarchy to serve as intermediary between humans and the subject of their belief.  And some tribes came to assimilate outsiders into the tribe if they accepted these beliefs.  This mechanism, served as an establishment of social norms within the group, and served as another extension of the first governmentality

Though the young of the species were always at the mercy of their mothers until such time as they could fend for themselves, belief established a hierarchy of familial authority, which became an extension of the first governmentality that had consequences for individual autonomy long after the ability to hunt and gather was manifest.

Eventually belief required scribes in order to maintain traditions intact for posterity, and in time we began to have written laws, and then written title and deed, and officers of the written law serving as proxies for the deadly force of the whole. This we call the "civilized" State

The interpretation of law led to yet another hierarchy of judges and advocates.  And this lawcraft dismantled a degree of the original governmentality, for no longer did individuals need to rely so much on the consent of the rest of society for their boundaries to be recognized.  And for better or worse the deed of ownership became a franchise of the deadly power of State; and thus churches and families became governmentalities within a government.

States produced legal tender, so that once labor was extracted, it could be stored up, and this form of  riches allowed enterprising individuals the franchise of governmentality as well.

Monied wealth became both the means and inducement of many technological advances.  And in time the deadly power of many officers of law was available to be wielded even by an individual of modest means, and even by the thief that was able steal it from his home or wrest it from his cold dead fingers.

Some centuries back, it began to be thought necessary to limit the power of government and the power of franchised governmentalities, for all had been shown able to wield tyranny.  This revolution was meant to meld the consent of society with the civil state, so that the individual would not be subject to the whims of either mob or king or any other dangerous corporate body or individual.  Clearly, our American revolution still has a long way to go.

"where there is no law, there is no freedom: for liberty is, to be free from restraint and violence from others; which cannot be, where there is no law: but freedom is not, as we are told, a liberty for every man to do what he lists... for who could be free, when every other man's humour might domineer over him?"

-- John Locke; from Second Treatise of Civil Government, CHAP. VI. Of Paternal Power