Zombification

Poem Playlist: The Dangers of Being Dead When You Are Alive #1

When we play the game of oppression,

the arrangement dictates

that we stop producing Aliveness

inside ourselves.

*

So we begin

to harvest the aliveness of others

to fuel us.

This derangement

drives us forward,

system and individual.

Ravenous,

crazed with hunger,

we rip out the hearts of the living

and barely savor them

before we are wrenched forward

by hunger once again.

*

We salivate over

the Aliveness that is the most

young

fresh and

tender.

But we will rip the organs

out of any Aliveness

that crosses our path when we are hungry,

and we are always hungry.

*

We are not monsters.

Merely structure trying to live forever.

Which is monstrous,

moving towards grotesque.

We are out of sync

with life on this planet

which has a balance of structure and Aliveness

called cycles -

dying and rebirth,

Spring and Winter.

Regenerativity

built into the system.

*

But oppression demands an endless spring.

*

We pit ourselves against life,

our exceptionalism granting us hope

that we can win the fight.

We are not monsters.

But we catch the children

with our cameras

and drink their youth

with a gaze

that we cannot deny

looks vampiristic.

We feed off them

until they make their way

from delicious youth

to rehab,

where they become tired-looking

like us.

We savor the last drops

of their hope and determination

before turning our eyes to the next crop

of children at our trough.

*

Capitalism ensures that

we do not value anything

we can create for free.

We only value

what has been imbued with scarcity

by the game.

So we hunt,

and steal,

and ride the waves of euphoria

that wear off after lunch…

We are so tired…

*

In our famished daze

we never notice

that we

are alive.

*

We are actors in a play of zombification.

We have been playing so long,

we identify with the role.

We have forgotten we are not really dead.

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From my yet unpublished book of poetry, Eat Your Trauma.

Photo credit Photo by Yoksel 🌿 Zok on Unsplash