Anything for Nothing

There are plenty of problems in the world, many of them interconnected. But there is no problem which compares with this central, universal problem of saving the human race from extinction.
—John Foster Dulles, U.S. Secretary of State under President Dwight D. Eisenhower from 1953 to 1959.

Written circa 1991, this dark work addresses sentiments of the late Secretary of State.   There is little sense of priority in this world.  A culture forged in pretense, greed, and consumerism is coming to a unforeseeable end.  The foreseeable end was extinction.  Now, it is only the parasites feeding on the blood of the planet along with their zombies who will be rendered extinct or worse.

 

Anything for Nothing

             Anything is better than nothing

                  and nothing is what you have

                  when you try to mold reality

                  in the shape of anything at all.

 

             A confusion with American heritage

                  has brought on a senseless era

                  of entire groups of confused people

                  banding together for anything.

 

             It seems that no one wishes to stand alone,

                  for in a group there is safety in numbers

                  and it enforces the belief of righteousness

                  though the cause be a trivial sham.

 

             In a world of endless evil

                  where freedom shrinks by the second,

                  to see people cry and die for anything

                  is the worst of nothing.

 

             All these millions with nothing

                  will do anything at all

                  to put some meaning in a meaningless life

                  and that is nothing at all.

  ─Alan Kenneth Paine

Marquis Who’s Who in America, Arts & Literature