Joe Crocker

Gold Diggers

     ...gold and silver, when serving as money, did not
     represent a social relation between producers, but were 
     natural objects with strange social properties. (Marx,
     Capital Vol 1 – The fetishism of commodities and 
     the secret thereof)

In these shy blinks, occult utility
sits snug and waiting, precious in the palm 
– a ring, a cross, a chain, a tooth, a charm
of quiet incorruptibility.

Their lustre keeps its pretty smile, but see
how sovereigns buy the busy world’s salaam.
The market finds a price and twists the arm
for payment in that raw commodity

– ourselves. Exchange obscures the breaking back,
the lucky streak, the days of empty panning,
the cost of living bodied in the act.
Labour makes us and our understanding
 
becomes the property of things, while we
are vanished with the boiling mercury.

Joe Crocker has his 25 yds breast-stroke certificate, several Scouting badges and “O” level Epistemology. He has won prizes – bubble bath mostly, a bottle of  Baileys once. His poems squat in obscure corners of the internet. Googling him will tell you all about a deceased Sheffield-born rock singer. He gets by with little help from friends.