The Circus
I am a cardiac arrest awaiting your sweet caress of disbelief.
The unexpected vacation from the frozen food section of your life;
And it's quiet, honest, and long awaited.
You've spent years duct taped to computers,
Attempting to find relief prematurely.
I myself was lost in cyberspace, a traveler gone astray.
Wandering in the intangible,
Tasting anything but the obvious,
The perfection of the non-existent.
I would escape by writing poetry in odd places
On the backs of spoons,
The tips of tooth picks,
Anywhere they couldn't find it.
And i think to myself,
"It's so abstract I must be deep."
I am so deep in the shallow end of humanity,
I've lost the need to swim.
I can tread water in my ego and talk about my own philosophy.
And philosophically I only speak the binaries they give me.
The juxtaposition between wrong and right,
I might be in the land of the free,
But as far as I can see,
It's a 9-5 curfew,
A 24-7 rat race.
Who can spit the most absurdities and not have to confess.
WE KNOW NOTHING!
We experience life in digital precision,
Information excelerated,
We make guesses, never decisions.
We talk about everything but the here and now.
LIVE, LATE BREAKING NEWS!
Is pre-recorded, edited, fabricated
In Los Angles Back Rooms.
I'm Just dying for a conversation,
That doesn't begin with the suspicion,
That this has all been said before.
Every word mechanical and trite,
I forfeited my right for independence,
And got shackled to pay stubs and the nightly news.
But I only got what I see.
Hollywood is in diet pills and magazines, not movies.
Somewhere people are dying in large quantities,
But the room they've locked me in is too dark to be objective.
So I smell victory in the decisions we make.
Because although we talk of revolution,
We also buy, sell, and consume.
They say freedom is choice,
But how can we know what we want, when they tell us what to choose.
Check your local supermarket.
You are directed by the tag lines:
Organic, new, Sale, fresh, club member,
24 brands of low carb frozen lasagna.
Line the rows,
Along side the red and blue state battle of Coke vs. Pepsi,
Democracy prevails in redundancy.
Beyond isles of repetition,
Lie check out counters and last time offers of acceptance.
You are inundated with magazine racks,
That host a sea of piercing affluent eyes, air-brushed and flawless.
Brunettes with boob jobs,
Celebrity bachelors tanned, gray, and horny.,
So you look in the horoscopes that line their head.
In the T.V. guides and
The 16 variations of extreme winter chill peppermint gum,
You look until you are offered your final chance to exercise you
inalienable right,
Your Freedom:
Paper or Plastic?
Its a cycle...a sickly natured beast.
You could be the most conscious motherfucker,
And still be begging on your knees.
Ain't no escaping it,
If brevity is the soul of wit,
Well than this is the joke that never ends.
So try and find your peace in between the punch lines that never arrive.
The seconds that they haven't cataloged.
Locked down,
Solidified.
Presumed individuality does not equate autonomy .
Your life still exists outside of wall clocks and watches.
Name brands and credit cards.
The trick is to still be breathing when your regularly scheduled
program turns to static.
When the powers gone out,
And gasoline has ceased to combust,
This earth will still be spinning, still dancing with a billion other
balls of light.
Thanks for creating a dialogue in this endless web of diatribes.
-elliott kuhn
