FACTOR EIGHT

I

"Buddy, got an I.V?"

I want to refer to that state
I used to live in with a code name,
Because when I was in high school
Grady Cummins Gladys, all in lattice,

One needle darning in the dark, flashing
bleeds a room full of misfits. May we swap
I.Ds, pretty please? Why bother when
the warden looks the other way..?

Good questions. Dept of Corrections, indeed.
A motley trustee of self-sufficiency.
One rogue gang-state of the union.
Factor eight; an endless loop, caught on tape.

Hey dude, are you irate? "Course not, fool.
All the evidence piled up a quarter century ago
while you were still in school and they melted
down and sold their golden rule which we all bought

into hook and sinker--not to keep upon our mantelpiece
for a silent afternoon--but to resell on the stock exchange
of blood." Revenants, Inc. A daisy chain in thrall,
sacrificing hemophiliacs, "catching all our backs."

Poison First World countries, look the other way,
prisoners as cattle, you and the S.A!
Fatherly gentlemen, hair turning gray.
Pure innocence as a direct causative agent of evil.

II
"R U Kiddin' me, I got a BLOOD BANK"

Father and son didn't just break down,
the boy wasn't hung from a rafter in the town,
Daddy wasn't gutted by three poor recruits
hired by money launderers in dirty business suits.

Money didn't eat our attentions all away,
the Generation Gap is a copout, I say.
The only real problem facing us today
is not looking squarely back at it in the eye.

And the reason for that is we're all hypnotized.
In obeisance to a covenant among us,
with its own unique camouflage,
introducing a meme known as lame.

Spreads faster than a pack of gangsters
on speed, drawing a domino bead on each other,
locked in a stale mate cocked circle pit
with just enough bullets so every one gets hit.

It's not about alienation or a breakdown
in communication networks, or stepdads
being jerks, going to work, finding excuses,
not enough time, full plates, or busy ruses!

And it sure isn't about what anyone chooses.
Aloofness is an infection, reciprocated and amplified.
By not cluing each other in, we effectively have lied,
while doing each other in...oh well, at least we tried.