Recessionary Measures in Support of Occupy Seattle by Ed Skoog

October 21st, 2011 reset - +


MONEY IS HORRIBLE, a bandage where

there should be a hand, and heart's engine

runs beat to daybreak. Money

and hands call to each other like

children at a pool; like this money

gathering noon into meadow.


It rains and rains. What is sleeping,

the mayor asks and asks.

What is a structure? The mayor

is named Mayor Mike McGinn

and he has made mistakes, asking

the people in the street the wrong


questions about their umbrellas:

is that your house? Where is your house?

What does it mean "to camp?"

Is sleeping political speech?

If money is political speech,

what isn't political speech?


Currencies: the arrival of their shadows

is the movement of obsession

navigating the aerial and the snag

persistent as grief or brief as crush

they hop forward or gleam rat-sleek

through territory they only sort and take.


What is and isn't money?


Many have been sleeping in money.

The money is congregating in the street.

Mayor Mike McGinn asks the money

what it wants and it says more money

and for the street to fall


back into its sleep. When police

shoot woodcarvers, sleep gets harder.

When protesters smash storefronts,

money wakes up more mayors.

Debate is the heart of this body

we make. But there is also the pleasure


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