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The Gilded Cage
(or The Benefits of Slavery)
For one thing,
having a slave - or a wife -
provides the dubious "advantage"
of extending one's individual control,
wishes, wants, whims and vagaries
down to the minutest of details.
You once had to feed the labor you owned
on formerly vast U.S. plantations
while today labor feeds itself out of wages paid
in outsourced sweatshops located in Asia.
And all the work you could never do by yourself
is done for you while you appropriate
the bulk of the wealth they create
to endow your home, your castle or your estate
which you will direct your wife to maintain and decorate,
perhaps arrange your library chairs and your kitchen spices
down to your strictest alphabetical specifications.
She will clean, cook and wash, bring up your heirs,
and lay out your underwear with military precision.
You might even get her to wipe your ass for you
by having her send flowers to your secretary/mistress.
But for all such dishonorable power
as you are "fortunate" enough to administer,
in essence, you are alone at the top
issuing orders from a cold, golden pyramid
to those "fortunate" enough to be owned by you -
slaves, wife and/or secretary/mistress,
who'll obligingly describe your endowment,
your stunning performance, your extraordinary charisma
as long as you continue to support her, that is.
You've built a maximum security prison cell
where you languish in solitary confinement
without the interplay supplied by an equal,
since slaves can't tell the truth and you prefer to be lied to.
The Emperor is alone with his thoughts
and emotions (if he has them),
and since all whom he sees are beneath him,
none of his actions are inter-, just trans-,
followed by the implementation of his highness's orders
and the sound of one hand clapping, his own,
as it slaps back and forth, back and forth,
back and forth, back and forth
in his effort to find satisfaction.
