The Poetry of Businessmen

Ba'al Ba'al Ba'al Ba'al Ba'al - I'm lovin' it!

I enjoy collecting the strange poetry of 21st century hypno-surveillance commerce. They are short and pithy like haikus. Some of them are so devoid of meaning, they leave me with a sense of awe.

This Culver’s bag is written in trochaic meter:

“Welcome to Delicious Culvers” — Trochaic meter begins on a stressed syllable and then alternates between unstressed and stressed. The most famous trochaic poem in English are the Weird Sister’s lines in Macbeth: “Double-double toil and trouble. . .”

Here is a bag of simple truth. The whole piece functions like a koan:

What is this bag teaching us? It is teaching us that there is no such thing as truth. (very Heart Sutra!)

And here is where the #recyclingrevolution starts. Note the exquisite free-verse collage in the background:

This next one has a small story:

I found this teabag and used it at the Vipassana meditation center in Georgia. The tag is so ridiculously serious for a cup of mint tea. Some 20-year-old marketer attempting to inject adrenaline/risk into tea choice. Should I settle with chamomile? No! Settling is not an option — I’ll have mint medley.

My meditation pal, Edward, commented on this tea bag’s antithetical approach to a calm and tranquil mind; “We meditate to practice accepting what’s in front of us. It’s a practice of settling and making do.” Edward and I sipped herbal tea into the deep and quiet night. . .

Poetry is a form of witchcraft. Soak in enough of this bedazzling nonsense and your understanding of “delicious” “beauty” “desire” “good” “love,” among other words and ideas, will become warped, blanched, and tasteless. Emptiness is the most profound application of this tragic magic of corporate hypnosis. Baa baa baa baa I’m lovin’ it.

Ba’al

Speaking of Ba’al, I’m writing to you from a McDonald’s in Springfield, Massachusetts. I can make this post because they have free wi-fi here! Free wi-fi but no soda fountain to fill up my tin water bottle. With all the rivers and streams clogged with chemical fertilizers and giardia, how is a 21st century American journeyman to cool his throat? Why, the fast food soda fountains of course! I have walked into many fast food chains, filled my bottle with just water and left. I am not afraid of thirst on the road because fast food joints are as plentiful today as the clear-running springs of yore were two centuries ago.

But this strange McDonald’s hides its fountain in the back. I’m scared that this will become a new and standard practice for fast food joints. I have no choice but to order a cup of plastic to quench my thirst. This is what I receive:

The straw insert is like a star or the hole of an anally retentive CEO. Note the circular and angular shapes analogous to the sigils of demons used in malevolent magic. Does thirst really have no chance? We are actively building a parched and self-alienating world. Something wicked this way comes. But! they do give plenty of wi-fi!