money

AYN RAND MADE AYN RAND

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Ayn Rand loved a golden bath where she signed her name

Her name was made of reinforced concrete

When she thought of her life, her mind moved to each level of the plan

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Ayn Rand had her own way of wanting

It was the American industrial model partly owned by Henry Ford

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Why are we so attracted to money as if it were a bright room?

Ayn Rand’s dead body was displayed beneath a 6-foot dollar sign made of flowers–

$$$gloom$$$

Ayn Rand knew that the word “money” does not come from the Latin term for “empty” until you are alone with money in an empty room.  She knew money is a metonym for money, and by this mechanism, really screws with your face

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Yet Ayn Rand was totally objective

When Ayn Rand saw Ayn Rand, she was an orthogonal street grid with park-like green spaces

Ayn Rand included many levels, at the top of which Ayn Rand waited beneath soaring, cantilevered roof lines

for the man version of Ayn Rand, a sixty-story cruciform skyscraper

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When some others looked at Ayn Rand, they saw a frigid megalomaniacally-scaled negation of Ayn Rand

And for this, Ayn Rand deserves our deepest sympathies

Ayn Rand made her name every day. It was all that she could do about the tensions of democratic life

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(Another poem in the Poems for Capitalists series I’m working on. Also added to MONEY.)

BILL BLASS GAVE MONEY A BREEZY LOOK

Light trapped in money gives off a sentimental feeling. A yacht, a Saturday, a fluffy omelet. A diamond rock on a thin hand guiding a rudder tells us nothing about the other hand.

Light trapped in money gives off a scientific feeling. It is light raised to the power of light. This is basic economics.

Bill Blass saw the light coming from inside money. Back then he was in the American ghost army.

When he got famous, Bill Blass believed in every day. He designed a suit for the ways a woman could behave. A woman could walk quickly. A woman could sit sexy on her bare legs and still have some legs left over to run a business. When the gel in her hair caught the light it gave off a quick sheen and Bill Blass understood how this was American.

I gave Bill Blass the Ford Motor Company. He sewed little anchors to the upholstery. The anchors held everything the same.

Fashion mixes interiors and exteriors. When Bill Blass had an idea he watched her hurry into an office building in the revolving manner of ideas.

Money knows how to mimic anything. Trapped inside money, light acts like a copy machine. This effect of light is known in Hollywood as atmosphere. Atmosphere makes the dummies in the distance seem more realistic.

The scream that seems to be coming from the distance really is coming from you. This is called sonic deception. Bill Blass knew this after he got famous. The ghost army got busy making fashion. The economy meant he already was where he was going.

Light trapped inside money becomes anything. It is the deer that laughs at the bullet, then acts like nothing has ever happened.

(from WE WERE ETERNAL AND GIGANTIC, which will be published by Magic Helicopter Press in April.)