Walt Whitman is believed to have written O Captain! My Captain about Abraham Lincoln, who would be the captain mourned in the poem.
I sent Walt an indirect message.
I identify as an abject materialist.
No place in the universe left to house peripatetic solds.
I meant, souls. Sold souls.
But, an afterlife could be a metaphor, and metaphors possess a little tinge of beauty.
A lifespan inside a timeline, a time for life in a long line, a penultimate experience.
An afterlife is hearsay, but salient.
An indirect response.
Walt, did you visit families like mine?
Back then, when I had parents.
Some I didn’t want. Walt wrote back.
Or did I write back?
O CAPTAIN! my Captain of industry!
O CAPTAIN! my Captain of industry! Henry Ford’s trip is done,
The factory had weather’d every strike. The prize Bill Gates sought was won,
The USB port is near. The ringtone I hear, the people all exulting Mark Zuckerberg,
While follow Steve Jobs eyes the steady profit, the exploitation grim and daring.
But O wallet! wallet! wallet!
O the bleeding drops of green,
Where on the board room floor my Captain lies,
Fallen broke and dead.
O Captain! my Captain of industry! the proletariat rose up and heard the bells;
Rise up – for Carnegie, Kroc, and Disney are alive – for billions the bugle trills,
For John D. Rockefeller, Sam Walton, and J.P. Morgan bouquets and ribbon’d wreaths –
for them the streets a-crowding.
For Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, and Warren Buffet they call, the swaying mass, their eager faces burning;
Here Captain! dear fathers!
The gun behind your head!
It is some dream that on the floor,
You have all fallen broke and dead.
My Captain of industry does not answer, his account should be drained and empty.
Money does not feel history, it has no empathy nor will.
The system unsafe and unsound, its voyage in time, in my time should be closed and done.
From distant trip the cargo ship comes in with object manufactured;
Exult O stores, and ring O cash registers!
But I with disappointment tread,
Walk the streets Captains made the cities pave,
Industry has not yet fallen; captains live among us the undead.
