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Revolution
 
The Road
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Man of
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Division
By
Zero
 
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Division by Zero

19960402
Time stolen between downloads
                furtive thief sneaking through the night
Trying to make sense of this madness
        as logic shatters into a thousand pieces.
So I tell you these things, and my words turn to 
   light bouncing off of mirrors
Keyclick, silence, the modem lights blink
Light, light, all around.  And still.

The darkness is within me, though the sun shines so bright
The darkness is within us, and all of the world is night

Three hours ahead, your siren song calls to me,
        I still try to listen, though I can't comprehend
        I still try talking though you'll never understand
Is it really just the difference
        between the color of our skin?
        The way our eyes slant, or the length and shape of our nose?
        Or is it because
of the clothes that we wear,
        the cars that we drive, the houses we live in?
Or is it just the emptiness between two distant hearts
        of two people who really never saw eye to eye?

This is a big country, but copper wire and mirrors make it seem so small
And who would've ever thought
        that love could be reduced to numbers,
        to a couple of switches set to "on" or "off"?
Ain't technology great?
With all this progress, it's hard for me to understand 
   why my city is being burned down.

So I keep typing, never knowing that you are scowling
        at a video screen
                half a world away.
We'll talk politics and joust with our ideologies,
        argue polemics, and shout each other down.
And in the end, I am angry with you
        wondering about what we ever had in common.
You'll never understand why I fear living in this white world.
Keyclick, silence.  The modem lights blink.

Light bouncing through tendrils of glass
                refracting, diffracting
        You must remember it all means "to break"
        Light breaks as if it were glass, but when I tell you this
           you think I'm crazy.

Are we breaking?
            Or is it better to pretend 
that this is the way things have always been?

        Division by color, and ashes are the remainder. 

America, America, God shed his mercy on thee and take away thine sins.

        The garbage pail is full of aborted children and the corpses 
 of dead doctors gunned down by a man who believes 
         that this guy who got nailed to a tree 
               was God.

And the men in blue ("We protect and serve...the rich")  
   cut through the urban fields, 
harvesting black men like rice, swinging billyclubs like scythes.

Men wearing bedsheets or with shaved heads march through the streets
        singing "Heil!" as their steel-toed boots clang upon the asphalt.

File not found.  System crash.
        Click.  Click.  Point.  Click.  Click.  Thrash.

Don't worry.  My hard drive is just having nightmares.

I start wondering if perhaps we were never meant to be,
        `cause my momma always told me
never to mix colors with the whites
        and all we've done is doom ourselves to disaster.

I start wondering if our kids will have to flee back across the Sea
        or end up hanging by their necks on a length of rope.

I start wondering if history really does repeat itself,
        and we're all just hamsters trapped on a treadmill.

Go back home, god-damned monkey.  You're taking all the good jobs.

"I thought you said you loved me."
   "Friends forever, right?"
      "Are you even listening?"

Is that all you really care about?

Keyclick, silence.  The modem lights blink.

NO CARRIER
©1996 by Victor Ganata