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Homunculus Jan 2021
**** if I know.
I scarcely understand much anymore.
I am but a puddle of coherent reminiscences
oozing across the floor into decoherence and
diffusing into maximum entropy.

We are in Hell:
all is Maya,
all is Mara,
all is Dukkha.
Yet, we are slaves
who love our chains.

And I am a lifeless, fetal,
**** economicus,
mortifying de rigeur
in the ossified skull of a
long forgotten **** sapien.

If only those kinship instincts could've
survived the havoc we've wrought.
Look at what we've done.
Look at what we do.

**** for money.
**** for oil.
**** for land.
**** for 'justice.'
**** for God
**** for 'the cause'
**** for the sake of killing,
and pave over what's left.

Leave a few trees and bushes for our
dystopic terrarium.
'Our Synthetic Environment,'
old Murray[1] called it.

Now, walk into the forest.
Be there. Stay there.
Do you feel it?
Any of this nonsense we call
'civilization'?

Or
is it that you feel something more. . .  
poignant?
More true?
To a point where our heated debates
appear as no more than frivolous diatribes?

When do we stop all this narrative solipsism
and get to the ******* point?
None of this is real.
Our thoughts are not our own.
Have they ever been?

The Spectacle [2] reigns supreme
as we idle spectators
speculate idly upon it.

Borges's fable of the cartographers [3]
has reached its apotheosis,
and we are its unwilling
and unwitting victims. . . .
A bit too much wine is the culprit here, I suspect.

1: Murray Bookchin, radical social theorist and major figure in the ecology movement.
2: "In societies where modern conditions of production prevail, all of life presents itself as an immense accumulation of spectacles. Everything that was directly lived has moved away into a representation." - Guy Debord, Society of the Spectacle, 1967
3: The Borges story, credited fictionally as a quotation from "Suárez Miranda, Viajes de varones prudentes, Libro IV, Cap. XLV, Lérida, 1658", imagines an empire where the science of cartography becomes so exact that only a map on the same scale as the empire itself will suffice. [source: Wikipedia]
Ira Desmond Jan 2021
A clock
is not a thing
that shows us the passage of time;

a clock
is a primitive device that moves
at a fixed rate while time passes all around it.

Time
was drawn and quartered
by the clock. It used to be an endless horizon in all directions,

but it was violently
partitioned into a grid system
in order to make it easier for those with power

to control
those without power. Clocks are
perverse. Clocks are capitalism. Clocks

**** nature
without nature’s consent. We rightly complain
about the partitioning and deforestation of wild lands,

of the Amazon,
and yet we are not outraged
at the partitioning and deforestation of time. There is

a reason
why one feels out of sync
with the natural Earth. There is a reason why one

cannot sleep
through the night. There is
a reason why the years feel like they are

slipping away
from us. Time is not
sand in an hourglass. Nor is it an etching demarcating

the position
of a shadow cast by a cone. Nor is it
the rate at which an electrified quartz crystal oscillates.

Rather,
time moves at the speed
of experience. There is simply nothing more

to it:

A morning fog lifts.
A bird lands on a dying tree on the far side of a river.

A frog leaps from a rock and disappears with a quiet splash.
A child dozes off while reading.

The world becomes dark.
A white-hot meteor streaks across a frozen winter sky.
Racquel Davis Dec 2020
I fatten the cow
And drink her milk
To wash down
Her baby's flesh
And she loves me even now
As I squeeze her *******
Her milk allows
It feels like silk
Because I fattened the cow
To drink her milk
Aerien Nov 2020
not even good enough to be classed a hack
try poetaster
but making more money than me
and more people reblog all their
juvenile word *****
than they do anyone else’s--
ah, legitimacy has been declared!
shots have been fired!
there it is, ladies and gents
the ultimate arbiter of quality:
the approval of social media!

do please excuse me,
let me go and burn my wings in penance.

may every poet you meet
stab you in the heart with their pen
and if they do not,
send them back in shame and disdain.
RAGE AGAINST THE PALE AND BEIGE.
“Look at me, I’m honest and I’m free, I was born to underachieve” -- Manic Street Preachers
C Nov 2020
How did we forget to know
The souls of all but human beings?
When did we stop listening
To language different
To the one we speak with ease?

Those elders knew, they were involved
With nature, not apart
They worked together
Until the witch hunts,
And before capitalism ate art...

And medicine, and childbirth,
Marriage, communities;
Profit would too much be capped
If common people lived their lives
With love and empathy

Because some they feared the awe they felt; the danger sensed in crushing
Waters, crumbling rock, and the power
Of biting jaws and ripping claws
Over small **** energy imposing

So they taught us to ignore the souls
Of rocks and stones and moss and trees...
We're taught to value human life
Above all that nurtures us -
Even clearly animated beings

And still amongst these human lives
Are some more valuable than others,
Categorised by colour or class,
Gender, size, way of life,
Or simply their choice if lovers

They re-wrote the myths of first beginnings
To omit other beings, except where they placed
Them only as antagonists
To bring ruin and shame upon our bodies
And eternal servitude we've faced

Modern Christianity pervades here
And other poison ideologies -
Not Jesus' way but the opposite...
Organised religion serves only to prop
Up our capitalist economies
C F Tinney Nov 2020
Pull yourself up
never surrender
no pain no gain
get some

collapse
give up
stop the pain
leave it

crush it
win at all costs
may the best man win
no quit

loosen your grip
enjoy the journey
lose with grace
stop

destroy the day
seize the day
capture the victory
nothing is too much to give

relax
today
might be the last
day
poem speaks for itself
NB Nov 2020
Silently, I bought a liar's dream
Deep waters for stars
Serenity for success
Believing a goal is there to be reached
A life relieved of circumstance

Cheating myself for an extra moment of sleep
I paved my roads
But they lead only to places I hate
I cheated myself for a second of memory
For the good things they said that come
To those who wait

But they took our faces
They changed our names
They've mistaken our wishes for long, nameless hours
They burned our pages
& corrupted our songs
On graves they once dug, now they lay flowers

Saying prayers to concrete heavens
But we know that angels don't live here anymore
& the limit must be the limitless sky
Of feelings that we so eagerly ignore

Since they reshaped our faces
& cloned our hearts
Then given back all that we've left to die
Mother, they've taken away our childhood
But they will never take us alive

N.B.
Homunculus Nov 2020
Spectacle!
Spectacle!
Spectacle!

Upon thee I feast  
as your willing
receptacle
thou art my bread's yeast!

Fill me with fear and with grief and doubt
Fill me with joy and with hope I may shout
From atop a tall mount of my own dissolution
And lull me to sleep with your grandiose illusion!

Spectacle!
Spectacle!
Spectacle!

DEAR!

Help me make sludge into mead, crystal clear!
Tell me my roles and opinions and thoughts!
Sell me that which makes my deep emptiness naught!
Oh, you our greatest omnipotent seer!

Spectacle!
Spectacle!
Spectacle!

CAUGHT!

See what you've so serendipitously wrought!
See how so boldly and wondrously you've taught!
For without your guidance, what would be bought?
What would be sold lest the gold you have brought?

Spectacle!
Spectacle!
Spectacle!

FRAUGHT!

What would become of mass cultural trends?
When means for themselves would desist and come ends?
How could we possibly live without you
When you are the arbiter of all that's True?
I don't know that this is finished. Also, don't read Debord the day before an election.
Zywa Oct 2020
Flooded wine cellar:

the bottles become worthless –


without their labels.
Capitalism

“Self-defense” (2016, Marijke Schermer)

Collection "Shelter"
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