How shall we measure the price of pain
and in which sort of vaults shall we store it?
The vaults of one memory store a portrait -
subjective, perfected and massively ignored.
The vaults of heaven punish with distance
and absentee management and usury's rates.
The vaults of medicine shine to their profit
pristine despite flow of capital and blood.
The vaults of the bankers are orgiastic,
with an unsafe love of Mammon and murder.
Thirty silvers glint dull on the cowled eyes of both
as they withdraw at the appointed time of death.
Your value is not decreased for us, our loves .
you drain the heart's coffers - we shall not miser.
Our wealth is in compassion borne of debit.
We have lost so much that something has been gained.
Though the State may demand that we kneel for now,
we open no mouths but to curse its very name.
And we shall never deny you, crowing cocks
and we cry for you in our occupations
and we pool our resources to drown the few
who said you should cough, spit and throw up your lives
so that gain would lose you and love would despise
who proved their mettle by dying in its name.
It is thus we shall measure the price of pain -
by showing the forgeries misdubbed concern.
Concern for money, perhaps, or advancement
across a corpsewalk to bad medicine's prize.
Withdrawal is their penalty for fiscal hate
and we shall apportion resources for health.
Collective action reaps early rewards
as the bankers' and the doctors' vaults swing wide.
We know they have lied - they have dribbled out facts
like crumbs from a loaf of penicillin bread -
thirty silver bullets, hiding the magic one -
This, the price of pain, we shall take from their hides.
We shall not rest 'til we cure this illness
and we cannot rest with things as they are.
Throw open the books and seek out the truths
as we define them, not filtered through cash.
The price of pain shall both rise and plummet
'til we end all prices and value our lives.
