Romero was a romantic.
Voluntary Zombification
wasn’t included in his epic.
Nor was informational monetisation .
We are the mumbling, stumbling masses.
We’re the brain dead, GM fed, disposable classes.
Deafened by the rumbling malice used to reassure us.
It’s the somnambulists’ sonorous psalm-like chorus:
It’s their fault – COMPLY
It’s their fault – OBEY
It’s their fault – ACCEPT
Above us holographic promises projected
onto roiling clouds of discontent
seem concrete.
Below, the mire sucks to ankles, feet
rotting in perpetual effluent, deep
and cloying as corruption is cheap.
Malaise molests our mucous membranes,
remaining even after exhaling this weighty air.
With fuzzy focus, our brows furrowed
we attempt to see clearly in ever-long shadows:
the projections.
Mirages of meaning
heinously inspiring false hope
through eye burning vapours
and looking glass lies.
Fingers outstretched we strive
to grasp
then gasp
surprised
when hands pass
through
banisters on stairs
that were never really there
at all.
We fall
for this repeatedly,
our gullibility
rivaled only by the virility
of our envy.
Gaudy baubles.
Tawdry tell-alls.
Scandals based on media morals.
Distract, deny
debase, decry,
berate, then buy
into this
mis-in-
formation.
Visions of similar vexatious veracity
we are force-fed emphatically
until this aspirational claptrap
is snapped up
by strapped up
facsimiles of fashionable pretence.
(In their defence,
all face paint is war paint
and all clothing is fancy dress.)
And yes, I too
am subsumed
by this murky world.
Cursing at cloud forms
coughing at coarse fumes
finding comfort in costume.
Is this
security?
The Mafia style Protectorate
we live under with Protocol Three?
The perverted version of protection
offered by the Panopticon
promotes
extreme proposals
perfect
for pitting us
one on one
and on and on
we go ‘til we turn on
ourselves.
Belly-flames long gone cold,
we’re dejected, cut price, wholly sold.
Raised on debt and dreams of gold,
forget ever owning anything.
Political correctness causes steroid- thin skins
to equal the pages of the books we binned
and burnt
never having learnt
to critically think
our way out
of the mess we’re in.
Overused superlative responses
out-stretch soaked and underrated nuances
to polarization purpose.
Once we are accustomed to unreason at this rate
we lose our slippy
grip on the power of debate.
Reduced to frothing opinions,
forthright remonstrations
forceful demonstrations
and farcical deliberations
over arbitrary -isms and -ists.
“No I’m sorry, you must choose from this list
of things we have determined are suitable for you.”
When the decision is between
being thrown to
the hounds,
or buried under the ground,
still breathing
it’s no wonder folk are
keeping their heads down,
silencing dissenting sounds,
numbing their sense of feeling.
With enough bodies under the mire
the heap might just be high enough
to lift us up beyond this stuff.
That’s the logic, right?
Except that fetid foundations
build putrid palaces
and subsidence is simply
impossible to fight.
Sooner or later we are all sucked under,
fucked over
by a state that places emphasis
on cronyism and nepotists.
What makes you think you can win?
It’s not a case of sink or swim.
We need to invert the way we think
to even have a chance.
They aren’t world leaders,
they are world servants
And the sooner we remind them
the sooner we end this macabre dance.
