Monday, May 9, 2011

Safety Bleating Within The Herd Of Consumers

how they struggled like salmon to negotiate the currents of trendy styles
they quoted richly and freely from various movies and sitcoms

how they practiced their lines like Shakespearean actors
reciting advertisements and slang phrases endlessly to each other

how they fled like the wildebeest when their leaders were startled
stampeding once and again from gizmo to gadget

how their consumer assemblages changed like rainbowed chameleons
as they threw down and picked up in seemingly-chaotic but instinctive patterns

how they continually sought the hyperbolized New and Exciting
always in the context of their blindered and literalist, neo-con xenophobia

how they raised their little muzzles from their cubicle burrows all alike
sifting the complex breezes of hyper-consumerism

how they moved on without concern leaving their droppings behind
rendering unfit what they no longer wanted

how they bleated like piglets for sugar, salt and fat
trying to assuage the emptiness that they mistook for hunger

how they piddled and side-barred until they lay in their own wastes
passing away while myopically planning only to rejoin the consumer race

how they huddled together as media shadows danced on their walls
and clever adverts crushingly drowned the quiet voice of the earth

how they saddled themselves with surreal financial burdens
chasing lame illusions which were bored endlessly, deep into their skulls

how they lied to themselves and boasted emptily to each other
swimming in a twisting bait ball, trying not to look either forward or back

how they shopped too close together for cheap imported goods
bleating quite foolishly as the good jobs gradually disappeared

how they wasted with gusto both water and oil
fouling the air with their driving and poisoning the land to grow food

how they groveled like fawning dogs for government subsidies
meanwhile ranting on about personal responsibility and fiscal conservancy

how they twitched and cried out in their uneasy sleep
not quite remembering dreams of things they would never dare face

how they struggled to define themselves within the vast herd
and savagely attacking en masse, those daring to differ

how they continued denying their place in some squishy balance of nature
blithely assured by media leaders that more research was needed

how they quickly grew impatient and bored when the details were gone into
yet avidly dismissed out of hand scrupulous research as junk science and fuzzy math

how they squirmed with discomfort when they glimpsed contradictions to their faith
diving back with alacrity into the warm and sustaining illusions of their media hosts

how they portrayed each other as intelligent creatures
echoing pre-digested soundbites back and forth until, finally, each one fell silent

how they boasted of their supreme natural moral authority
never bothering with the lessons their forefathers had left them

how they condescendingly viewed those fools in the rest of the world
as they were overtaken in education and human understanding

how they tripped over each other in individual quests for the same illusion
searching for spiritual fulfillment within the noise and dust of the swarm

how they all clucked in avian tones at each new atrocity
always convinced that, at last, the bottom must have been reached

how they reacted without thought, all in the same direction
like a large school of small fish when a cloud throws a shadow

how they often festered inside, nursing many small grudges
then lashing violently out, but still always wanting to be in

how they fell asleep at the wheel on a road straight and wide
woke up in horror just upon striking the tree

how they carefully deluded each other as to the nature of their fate
willfully ignoring the great empty void to which they all must return

how they conscientiously wasted each waking hour and avoided all introspection
then, far too late with feeble excuses, tried to invent some kind of accounting

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