[Newspoetry] the outlook for our economy

[Donald L Emerick]

"The Outlook for Our Economy: 'Up'"
say the lookouts for our economy
who know that the effects of belief
often cause the beliefs to be true,
or else to be false self-prophecy,
which never means a false prophet
but that the people did not believe,
and, for their unbelief, they suffer.

Up is where you must go when
you move from where you are --
or, since the first direction is our star
to name, for future reference in direction,
we also could say that up is out and away
from the original centering point, today,
if you happen to like enclosures
and their obvious bounding limitations,
in repeatable cycles and perimeters,
radian measures and transcendentals.

Up or out,
or up and out,
for whatever takes direction
just means you got away
with it, for at least a little while.

Curiously, the same people
who believe in both up and out
also believe in degeneration,
that, somehow, there is this slope
down and away from God, I hope,
a rather steep inclination, for good,
this evil idea of the "Fall of Man",
which is a kind of moral free-fall,
or even a communistic free-for-all,
when there is, so they pretend to think,
no essential gravity to bind things
down to fixing questions of fixing God
as the original center of the universe.

(A fixing God,
affixing God,
a God who fixes
(or else, what else is a God good for?),
a fixer-upper God,
who needs to be fixed up
because things are bad,
and, yet, it's not His fault,
who was, OmniOmnious,
the Designer qua Design,
Holy, Wholly, Holey,
responsible for everything;
yet blames falls on others,
when things go bad,
which is why we fix God,
eternally are fixing up God,
trying to find Him a Mate,
a stalemate or a stallmate,
if He happens to be Male,
which, judging by the mess
that the world seems always in,
I could easily believe,
even if I do not believe in Him,
for I have no fixed idea,
that conspires to any end:
traditional women want God
to be the Man of their dreams;
and traditional men pretend
to be the image of God:
and the people all said
"Works for me;  Amen
(Ah, men)" -- which is why
nontraditionals threaten masculinity,
the maleness of maledictives,
in the traditional culture --
though we do not favor
femininity as a replacement,
for quid pro quo changes nothing,
but disembodying gender neutrality.)

Up is a positive sign of belief,
for negative hosts bow us down,
force us to accept the currency
Stamped "In God We Trust"
as if such forced confession
suffices to hold an economy up,
to prevent it from being robbed
from below by us grave-robbers
who place no trust in God above.

Even loyalty itself is under curse,
for we must say "nation under God"
which, when we believe in no God,
means that we confess of Emptiness,
but we fret that someone misthinks
that what we say, in saying God,
is some kind of positive affirmative,
a ground beneath for a sky above,
but I only grind God under my foot
because it is I who towers into sky.

It may not matter much to me
what other people think I say;
my intent is not to think for them,
but to show them, by how I think,
how they do not seem to think.

And, how do I know this,
that no one else than I think?
Cartesians fail, I think,
for it is I am that I think,
and not I think that I am,
the thought also rises,
goes up, out and away,
from the I who is central
to my own point of view,
and other minds, I admit,
then, could not think,
not by the same standard
could they do the same thing.

Some place being must vanish
in the name of some objectivity,
but I do not believe that
I have to believe that
vanishing is more than an illusion,
and that is what I fight about,
this question under memory
as it faces reasoned answers
that vie to become memory
that is impermeable to time,
centered upon itself, in truth,
from which there is no up at all.

Thanks for listening,
Donald L Emerick