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Showing posts with label conformity. Show all posts
Showing posts with label conformity. Show all posts

Friday, February 17, 2012

Choker of the Apes [Today's News Poem, February 17, 2012]


Choker of the Apes [Today's News Poem, February 17, 2012]

Property is theft; likewise is the self.
Selfness is the lapse, folly and betrays.
Ownership is flaw, ego and the self's
Selfish, and a slave; prayer of the false teeth.

Self is a desire—nothing like our maw.
Atoms and your tears give you to ourselves.
Polymers of life, lifelines on a string,
Billions on our neck: choker of the apes.

DURING Mr. Soleri’s long tenure, Arcosanti evolved into a surprising anachronism: a company town. The product line? Handmade bells and heady theories about imaginary cities, or “arcologies.” Ordinary capitalism — independent businesses and privately held homes — was anathema.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/16/garden/an-early-eco-city-faces-the-future.html



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Monday, May 24, 2010

No Reincarnation for Zombies [Twitter Found Poem, May 24, 2010]

No Reincarnation for Zombies [Twitter Found Poem, May 24, 2010]
Tweets+Edits=#twitterfoundpoem

There is rarely a time when I am not agonizing.
a kitten and a white rat were lovers.
THE white rat said he'd pay for half an abortion,
so he gave THE kitten a hard punch
and OUT came a white mouse.
which was eaten by THE white rat.

I remember when I was not agonizing
with karmic illness. a LONG time ago.
It was like a natural disaster,
a trip to zombie land.
I had to conform, caught in a State of Emergency
with government ninjas. They HAVE ALWAYS SAID
WAIT UNTILL They give the waddyasay.
They HAVE ALWAYS SAID
YOU HAVE one life, one #.
YOU are caught in a State of Emergency.
So don't die.

I had quit my job.
I had to Kidnap me to make me happy.
I skipped town & got a new #.
I had to be reborn.
zombie friends from this life
might become strangers in future life.
or might not be reborn...

Who were they? THE kitten & white rat??
friends from a past life??
and the white mouse??
my Child in a future life??

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Friday, April 21, 2006

On Zombies

By Khakjaan Wessington

Re: 3.31.06, 8:50pm: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2006/03/31/DDG6TI0A8N1.DTL

The pundits miss the main reason why zombies are ascendant; after the werewolves of the 80s, and the vampires of the 90s: it is not because of genre fears of disease, or betrayal by loved ones- zombies play on the fears of human mass extinction. Vampires and werewolves live among us- feed upon us. To drive the human species extinct works against their interest. They are perhaps interested in creating perpetual thralls of humans, yes, but not the annihilation of the breed.

Zombies are the anthropomorphization of death- and yes, this seems tautological to the literal-minded- but need I remind those very same literalists that death cannot be expressed literally? One can depict a state of death, but not the pure distilled phenomena of death. While it seems obvious to point out that 'undead' is now a culturally tautological term, it is an error to mistake the monster zombie for the monstrosity of zombie-ism. Death is usually defined as post-life. Unlife is a distinctly different state from death, as a rock, or a hydrogen atom was never alive. So un-deadness is then a way to personify deadness.

The zombie is the conformist and only the living are non-conformist. Zombies depict action without meaning. Undeath without life. They serve solely to spread the contagion of death, just as the conformist seeks to force others to conform. By contrast the werewolf and the vampire are iconoclasts. They live secretly in civilization and their special properties are a constant source of trouble and excitement- the very things that give life meaning. So though zombies and vampires are both undead, only one exists without the ego we call the 'self.' If there is an internal cognitive life for a zombie, it is unknown to the outside world and seems to do nothing to aid the zombie's fulfillment of a 'satisfying' afterlife.

Zombies are a manifestation of the fear of total annihilation and the meaninglessness that such eradication of the species brings to enlightenment values of secular humanism and 'progress.' This is the most terrifying consequence of the zombie: if zombies exist, then the Creator does not. Or worse, the properties of the Creator are malicious and more akin to Descartes' evil genius. In this regard, the zombie is a post-nuclear age monster that perhaps owes more to Harlan Ellison's "I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream" than it does to the rather civilized monsters of the pre-industrial age. The most terrifying possibility of course, is that the Creator as we know it, lost to a gambit by some malicious entity; and that the force that was protecting our souls is gone. The existence of zombies suggests a breakdown of the natural order of things and that doom is imminent.



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