I Am Become The South

Oh my god I think I'm Cuba or possibly Tanzania
The realization hits me bluntly
Oh my god they've colonized me
Castro: be virgin sound
Nyerere: a screenless life
Oh my god, they are extracting all my precious raw materials
Suharto, Batista: I am become the south
So now the old dialectic has been resurrected in my subconscience
Between traditional and neo-colonialism in impressive synthesis
So the forced participation in the sewer of commerce
Is unrepresented taxation and the insidious beckoning
Of product and promise is a goddman IMF loan
Henry Ford plays Cortes in the last of the great twentieth-century authoritarianisms
Stalinism and fascism make way for the great dictatorship of the corporation
Oh my god we've been convinced that the stranglehold of corporations
Can somehow safely coexist with our notions of participation
The unions: the Elgin Marbles
The billboards: Victoria embankment
Emilio Zapata was not the hand that changed the channel
But the hand that switched off the whole goddamn TV