When the credits finally
Roll for this, the
Worst story ever
Told, don’t bother
Sifting through the names
For yours or anyone you know.
Unless they were by chance a shepherd king,
A virgin birth, a resurrection, a messianic prince or some
Such childish thing. You can storm the edit suite
Or move to block its theatrical release,
But I think we can safely guarantee
There will be no revisions to the script
Made on behalf of a supporting cast(e).
Because history exalts
Only the pornography of force;
That of murderers and psychopaths
(The rest of us, of course, stricken from the narrative wholesale:
A back drop to their tale);
As we, the two-bits,
Are ushered on and swiftly off this stage with
The jawbones
Of asses.
No stirring curtain call for the masses.
No floral bouquet.
No breaking of legs.
No recurring role.
No artistic control.
And so in these days,
in this terminal phase,
it’s all left to chance.
A piece of advice:
if you’re cast on thin ice,
you may as well dance.
Do what you feel you must,
But as for me I was not
Put upon this Earth
To subjugate or serve!
For these sixteen years of my life, I’ve slowly come to appreciate the extent of the middle-class bubble; blotting out with shining opacity the hardships of the less-well-to-do, the consequences of my own material affluence, what was being stolen not just from the faceless ‘them’, but from myself; in fact, everything else. It took so long just to see beyond that comfortable bubble.
Above all, suburban life is the precipitation of isolation; suffering of constant lack of perspective, contrived standards, monochrome culture. It is the logical conclusion of the American Dream: endless rows of prefabricated houses where wilderness and community once stood, rented mansions and identical delusions of grandeur, self-justifying collective unconsciousness that forms the basis for the various degrees of stock-market, pseudo-individualistic, evangelical race-nationalist mentalities termed “normal” “politics”- milder versions, “liberal”; more honest ones, “conservative”.
And yet, in the midst of all this, I still managed to take some important steps. As a child, I took on vegetarianism, connecting cruel slaughter to the manufactured carcass I was expected to consume every night at the prescribed time. Utter disgust and recognition of hypocrisy began the undoing of my conditioning. From there, I began to reject the more extraneous aspects of religion, opening the door for further questions regarding the validity and applicability of any sort of religion itself; soon, I would apply the same kind of reasoning to the capitalism and nationalism I had already deemed “necessary evils”, at best, for so many years.
But I’m still not free. Not yet. And I know I never will be, not until everyone else is of this utter insanity we call a society. So until then, I not only reject, but resist the globalized establishment, linking arms and joining hoarse voices with all other resistors against any facet of its illegitimate existence; all apologies in advance for my privilege.
