“Circa 1984-87, The Ballad Of NZ” ( A Prose Poem/Spoken Word)

by Anton Martin Smith antonmartinsmithwrites@gmail.com

The Politicians were too young,

Or too stupid,

Or too lacking in real life experience,

Or too Professorial,

Or too academic,

Or too Lawyerly,

Or in truth – they were all of the above.

High on bad Neoliberal theory.

The so called “Washington Consensus”.

The Corporate Raider Lobby got to them,

In true ‘Wolf in sheep’s clothing’ fashion.

They were sold a story of “growing up & becoming worldly”.

For the Anglo-American Wolf did cry:

“NZ’s is just a silly backwater – don’t you want to be suave, like us?”.

“You must sell all those great ‘bad’ assets at a fire-sale to us”

“You must work more for less, so we can charge more for less”

“You must be a part of our single-blind experiment & guess who the blind one is dummy!”

“Now be good little slaves now stupid-o’s & do exactly as we say!”

“You have reached your destiny – as our fully propagandised automoton living breathing data points”

“And don’t worry if your society becomes a living hellscape – we promise to buy you a coke”

“Oh, wait did I say that out loud? Please forget I said that O Backward-o NZ 1980’s Politicians”

The Dopey Politicians took it all in hook, line, & ‘stinker’.

The Corporate Raiders took over,

Took over the minds of our oh so feeble Politicians.

And while we “The People” sank further into the mire,

They all said to us:

“Oh look at that beautiful mire you’re stuck in – I reckon some daisies are about to sprout”

“Oh, look you’re sinking further, don’t worry breath through this plastic drink straw”

“Oh no! You’re not breathing – oh well at least you can’t ever lodge a protest vote”

This is the ballad of the giant swindle that shoulda-neva-‘appened.

Yes! This was the shit-show called “NZ Circa 1984-1987”.

Yes! – We now have no bananas!

Well – none at affordable prices anyway.

Which is pretty strange – given we’ve been in a Banana Republic,

For 41 consecutive mire-filled years.

Oh well! I guess this is our lot in life.

For we went from hard-truth-seeking-knowing-soldier-farmer-labourer-types,

To weak willed bender-over-ers & take-it-up-the-butt-ers,

In only Thirty-Nine short years.

Yup we the people folded to those Anglo-American-Politico-Demons to easily.

Alas we were so open minded, that we not only let our brains fall out,

But we let them roll under the ocean & all the way across the Tasman,

Stopping only when they landed in Keating et al’s far-lap.

This was Circa 1984-1987, The Ballad of NZ.

And PS – we never got the Coke.

Special Post: “To the Denizens of the Very Big Cities of Earth” (An Open letter/Prose)

by Martin Anton Smith martinantonsmith@gmail.com

Dear Denizens of the various ‘Very Big Cities’ of planet Earth,

I would like to convey some home truths, not to taunt but to educate &, if i am lucky, put some wind beneath some weary & mottled wings.

I shall get right into it.

Living & working in A ‘Very Big City’ teaches you to embrace a culture of high consumption, materialism & disposability in your life & so also your relationships.

The denizens of the Very Big City suffer from “slowly boiled alive frog syndrome”.

The environment is so toxic yet so normalised, ever present, yet also invisible to the denizens’ hacked eyes.

If you the ‘Very Big City denizen’ don’t recognise this, then you can’t combat the effect.

This is also very profitable for the Corporations – & that’s no coincidence.

The whole reason for a ‘Very Big City’ to exist – is to provide a good return on capital & return on labour employed to the Capitalist.

If you are an employee in a Very Big City who has to go to work to survive – & that’s ninety percent of the population in these cities – & you don’t recognise the true reason a Very Big City exists, then you can’t ever save your soul – then so you will be miserable.

It is as sure as an apple falling from a true under the Gravitational Force.

There’s no avoiding it, even if you have a so called big salary.

Big salary jobs were created by Capitalists of the ‘Very Big City’ to fool employees to selling their time & energy at a highly amplified rate.

The trick played by the Big City Capitalists on the upwardly striving wage-slave is that they think that they can rise up the social ladder, slowly shed their misery on the way up, & be blinded to their in truth amplified wage-slave reality.

As planned by the Capitalist Oligarchs of the Very Big City, the upwardly striving wage-slave never finds the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.

The trick works perfectly, as once the amplified wage-slave reaches the top, but is still not a bona-fide capitalist, they will do anything to hide their retained if not also amplified misery.

If they let out the truth out of their retained & probably amplified misery, this now amplified wage-slave couldn’t handle the blow to their fragile egos.

This is why so many so called ‘successful’ people in the ‘very big city’ do themselves in, & die by their own hands – they can’t handle the reality, the now mountainous level of pain & anguish, the swindle they let themselves be so easily fooled by.

Big Cities are for Capitalists & people who aren’t Capitalists but aren’t so blind to not know it, & so keep a part of their soul for themselves. Everyone other than that has allowed their soul to be stolen by that ‘Very Big City’.

Often it’s not there fault, that they allowed their soul to be stolen by the ‘Very Big City’ – some did recognise it, but all too late. When they realised they were actually digging a grave & not a life, they were too deep to escape it. From that point you either end it all or you go insane, & agree to keep doing the same thing expecting a different result. So they just kept digging their own graves.

Others escape to the country late in life – but by then the damage is done, the quartz of dispair has become chrystalised. As they say you always take the weather with you. You must leave the Very Big City relatively early, before it is too late.

The overarching reason why all the denzens of Very Big Cities of the world are almost all zombified, cognitive dissonance, Einsteinian version insane, learned helplessness type slowly boiled-alive frogs?

Human beings tend get to comfortable with very uncomfortable conditions, so long as they are highly predictable.

So the real antidote to becoming just another empty shelled garden variety victim of the ‘Very Big City’ is this:

Know thy self, Know thy surroundings, know thy species.

If you know that, preferably earlier than later in life, you will know thy can still escape the real-life Gotham Cities that are, just like the upwardly striving wage-slave, amplifying their misery throughout the world.

Now pledge to never allow them to take all of your whole soul…ever!

Good luck, you are worth it.

P.S. To the few Capitalists & Companies of the V.B.C.’s who are on the side of good – keep battling & your commitment to your workers well-being as well as profits helps massively in the war…for is it not a war we are in – a war for a (wo)mans mind, time & energy?

M.A.S 25/05/2025

Hi there, it is me again…..

I have written some more on the subject, of the same theme – so I will add it here:

….If you try to look for life amongst the dead, you will always end up 100% disappointed, for life cannot flourish in locations where death holds the reigns.

This is why all of the “successful” people that the media dishes up to you are morbidly unhappy, & it shows on their faces. their sunken eyes with vibrancy that has disappeared many decades ago, they look twenty years older than they should.

The modern economy is actually a Death Cult – people who worship death the most in this system are rewarded, or should I say thrown more crumbs by the grim reaper of the The Economy. They are given more paper promise money. But the currency & all its cultural trimmings – banality, lack of creativity, snobbishness etc is only fully valid & redeemable within the death camps – the Big Cities.

Life can only flourish outside the death camps, in the villages & the country, where the death camp currency holds less sway, & life community, happiness, & health can dominate. True Evil must always not only hide this fact – it must reverse & invert it.

So, the mouthpieces of death – The electronic screens, the bosses, the landlords & the owners, the girlfriends, the wives must always work to denigrate the small towns, villages & the countryside, & pump up the paper money urban globe-trotting billionaire with the demon-like face.

To gain traction in the Big City you must all swear an oath to join the army of the soulless. So, that you become a body with no life, a machine with no individual will of your own. A thing that swallows the empty platitudes that dominate the cityscape. The correct instructions & programming that that you were born with – i.e. the contours of Life itself has now gone – that is to say – you have renounced Life itself, & replaced it with Death.

With that accomplishment done, Evil can now ply its trade in full upon you. That way people will see bad as good & good as bad. Then they will voluntarily enter the death camps looking for salvation, well-being & happiness from a cult & camp of death itself.

Brainwashed & re-programmed out of knowing what Life itself is & what it means, they now unwittingly plea to the gateholders of death for a chance to die. When an agent of Death supplies the wish, you have a fleeting sense of joy that feels real. You have been given your chance to move up the social ladder that is a total illusion, based on manufactured false scarcity.

They pray & worship the grimmest of reapers that have the run of those urban un-living nightmares called ‘Big Cities’. They are then given a gravestone to carry around with them – a Corporate Job in the Big City.

Armed with this Job there is nothing left to do but die. And that is what people in their millions & now perhaps billions do. The Evil has succeeded in destroying the Life that you used to have. And you gave it away easily.

But you don’t need to.

So, you can leave the Corporate Job & the Big City. You can start to get Life itself back. Or you can stay in the Big City & preach about what it actually is – a Death Cult, far more insidious that Auschwitz could have ever hoped to be. Point out to the infected that they have been made to think down is up & good is bad, bad is good. The reception will be more than bad – but if one soul is saved then your mission is accomplished. For if this happens, the saved person will save another, then soon it is only a matter of time before the lies are all noticed & the Death Camp, The Death Cult, The Death Economy, The Death Gatekeepers, The Corporate Death Jobs, & The Big City completely folds.

Why not help that Big City meet its True & final destiny a little faster than it otherwise would have? Or you can continue to blindly serve in the ranks of the Evil army of the walking dead.

M.A.S. 30/05/2025

“Muggings with a side of beer” (A Poem)

by Martin Anton Smith

Ask yourself: Is it The Economy or a just a Raid?

Think about it carefully.

But have a beverage on hand while thinking about it.

You need something to numb the pain of this kind of thinking –

Of how the world truly works.

The ability to choose a beverage, incidentally, Is also proof –

That although The Economy is in fact just a Giant Raid,

By the Rich on The Poor (& now even the middleclass).

There’s still pockets of joy sown into into the sneaky heist.

Sure – The Beverages all aids in their ability to Raid better –

I’m not disputing that.

Only a fool would.

But it’s still better to be offered a beer while being mugged,

Than to stand their without any stress relief at all.

They’ve thought of everything.

But a beer is still a beer.

So let’s raise a glass to our muggings,

With always a wry smile on our faces.

That’s our small victory,

It’s our little POW treat, If you will.

“Willard died in ’35” (A Poem)

by Martin Anton Smith

The economy crashes when too many people blindly copy each other thinking they’ll make an easy buck.

The ruthless ones that control everything long term know this.

They’ve known it since the dawn of man & probably before that.

So they sit on the sidelines ready to pick over the carcasses.

It happened this way in 1929 1987 & 2008 & 2020.

I can just imagine some ancient fossilised vampire with his centuries old battlefeild skin all lined with the seeds of hundreds of years of faustian knowledge.

He’s both sitting & dwarfed by an oversize leather chair clubs & he’s pontificating to one of his fellow blood sucking kinsmen:

“Oh my Willard, isn’t it wonderful that the crash of ’29 is going to have its one-hundredth anniversary in a few years? I plan on making a killing like I did back then. Now where did I put my cup of virgin’s blood? It was here a second ago. There’s to many swooping seagulls around the graceful Buzzards round here Willard. Oh, there’s my cuppa blood – still warm too. But It’s always a bit sad to see the waitress’s wilt. But let’s hang on a few years till the real bloodbath in 2029 Willard…Willard?….WILLARD!??…oh silly me I forgot Willard died back in ’35 – partied too hard during the Depression, the silly schmuck!”

I don’t blame Willard for not being there – even a vampire has to have a few blood free days once in a while.

As Bertie the pontificating vampire had always said around the club during big paydays, “there is such a thing as too much of a good thing you know – that’s why we cut these big crashes in half these days – we were all to greedy in ’29”

Contrary to ’80s Wall St catch cry,

Greed is not good.