Gypsum, bauxite, diamond, ore

These the rich men mine and store

Golden bars in Cayman banks

Oil in freshly minted francs

This the posters know by heart

The system must be shred apart

And onwards to the mine they go

Mouse in hand and Marx in tow

The digging site has high a wall

one they say could withstand all

It guards the iron-wrought status quo

Yet… falls to their shouts like Jericho

The ease of that they all dismiss

And stand on the edge of the mine’s abyss

“From here the gold is taken out!”

“Now we see what it’s all about!”

Around the chasm, crate on crate

– to store the ore – they estimate

And with no wrench, but only voice

The crates unbolt and the mobs rejoice

They scramble over comrades true

To glimpse the diamonds’ fractious hue

Dug with blood and slavery wages!

But in the crates find only pages

Feverish they parse the piles

“Perhaps some records for the rich men’s trials!”

And sure enough, in font size ten

Are writ the wrongs of a hundred men

“So and so said what back then?”

“That’s what it says! In twenty ten!”

“This man here thinks gays should straighten!”

“Sure enough the spawn of Satan!”

Across the site, they quickly find,

They’ve felled the walls of an old-post mine

A mile deep pit of a trillion lines

Crude missteps to drill, refine

And sure enough the yield is vast

As if each man had a tainted past

And every poster loud laments

Infinite blasphemed sacraments

As pages fly and comrades shout

Mine-dust chokes the new devout

And in the dust a ghost appears

Who grows less real the more he nears

The ghost is fat and well adorned

The first gold seen since the gold was scorned

“Fear me not for I’m barely seen,

It’s from my mine these papers stream.”

“The pages here are fairly priced.

A dollar a line and ten a slice.

Of course, you pay for the time you scour

10 cents a minute and a dollar an hour.”

Tossing coins they hardly hear him

And those who do would near revere him

Some grab spades to give free labour

“She said what? Now none can save her!”

The wall that fell behind them grows

All the posters now enclosed

Pages searched and history mined

Spouting views on the sins they find

And as they speak their words are gleaned

One by one their thoughts are screened

And all they say is fast repacked

With the latest misstep they extract

The apparition re-appears

To notify them of arrears

“With thoughts attached the crimes cost more!

Just two dollars and your view is yours.”