I often wonder when I hear screeds against capitalism and its manifold injustices, whether people think this system was invented and foisted upon us. It seems to me it evolved as species evolved, and that it should adjust in the same way. In any case, I love the title and the movement of this poem by Alan Dugan. Our stables could certainly use cleaning:
Marxist Analysis of the Fifth Labor of Hercules
The Augean stables were so full of horseshit
that the Augean nobles came to laugh at Hercules
when he was told to muck them out by hand.
They hoped to see him filthy on his knees,
all asshole and elbows going fast for years.
Instead he wrenched a river from its bed upstream
and set wild water roaring through the place
and washed it all away, all
the horseshit, and I mean all
the horseshit – the horseshit, the horses,
the stables, and the nobles too,
standing around ready to bugger Him,
Hercules, Wrestler of Rivers. Conclusion:
Revolting conditions elicit revolutionary solutions.