Hymn
Man, maybe I could win a competition with this! Maybe even two if I submit the German version as well!
Where would we be without you?
Omnipotent progress, mighty tits of the ambitious
Who sorts the world into big dicks and those who dropped the soap
Into ones and twos and who even cares about threes
Into jet, yacht and mansion versus page two of the Google search results
You who enabled us to come up with the top ten of them all, and so we do
»Ten sweetest dictators of the last century«
»Top 10 alternative dildos — from the banana to the unicorn«
»Our ten most effective genocides: Who’s got further with mass murder?«
My world, thank you very much, is a human centipede of elbows, one in my fellow man, one in the rear
Fuck, how they love you
Where would we be without you?
Without ladders to step on each other’s heads?
If it were up to you — and it is — we would throw out the positive and cut our wrists at the altar of the superlative — and we do
You’re an inventor, and even if (to our luck) nine out of ten don’t pan out, the rest of them makes up all the top spots of monstrosities
Envy — check
Jealousy — check
War — check
Check check check
Your hall of fame features the all-time winners of demise
The buffaloes of America, the sugar plantations of Haiti, the libraries of Alexandria
The horrors of the Huns, the gas chambers and the wealth of the west
How far we have come thanks to you
Where would we be without you?
Who else is going to teach us how to live?
Who instructs men to see women as property, and women that only their outsides are worthy?
Who aids us in the devastation of the world to reach our quarterly goals?
Who writes our manifest of growth? Whose merciful withdrawal of affection is fueling our self-destruction?
Who fans the cozy flame of our burnouts and waters the gardens of our cancers?
Who else should our children thank for the asphalt on their meadows, the apartment complexes hatching from their woods?
Who feeds our physicians with adipose desserts and delicate neuroses, our chairmen with instant slaves and our universities with education soufflés?
Which famines of the rich are held in check only by your salvific meat grinders, what spoils would there be without the benevolence of your exploitation?
What keeps us sated if not your insatiability?
No wonder
Angrily spouted in German in October 2016, just as angrily interpreted into English April 2018.
I’m an independent writer, translator and editor. If you think I can help you with something, shoot me an email at chrisloveswords@gmail.com.
