Multiconstruct

Phillip K. Dick talked about the Black Iron Prison as a descriptor for ever growing systems of control. I like the term and have been working on a piece about it for the last four or five years. Five years after posting this I am putting in the final (for now, I’m still not entirely satisfied with the ending) stanza. I finished it maybe three years ago and reads a little prescient with the election of Trump. I am putting together a chap book tentatively called “Words for Dark Times” and leading with this piece. I finished it on a road trip to Death Valley for Christmas I believe three years ago. That Christmas John thought it was my best yet.

Black Iron Prison

There’s a Black Iron Prison

Casts its shadow across the land

From the tar-sands of the North

To The Wall at the Rio Grande

So show us your papers

Your biometric ID

And remember a time

When you thought you were free.

And power corrupts

As always we have known

And absolute corruption

Is what we have sown

Just as the sun sets in the West

It rises in the East

and Total Control is the Mark of the Beast.

And you’ll show The Mark

to buy your bread

And show it when you sell

And without a trace of irony

You’ll call out for your Hell:

“Oh keep us safe from terrorists

Those oh so evil men”

And lock us up in cages

‘Til its safe to go out again.

And watch our every movement

And listen to every call

Analyze the meta-data

Until you know it all

And what Hitler wanted

But could not have

Will have finally come to pass

And we shall be a people

A people…

Made of glass.