The Kiss Of Lampreys...

The digital swamp has supplanted reality

There are no destinations 

which can remain 

without a web address 

There are no people 

which can exist in society

without a curated profile 

There is no truth

which has not been 

advertised and monetized

The truth is given to you 

by means that are intermediated

Non-human and non-humane entities 

which are neither the sum nor the intentions 

of those that it is meant to be compromised 

seek things for you to desire

They do not see you as a person

they see you only in their own image

as algorithms to be refined

into more accurate and predictable form

The posts you see from your profile-friends

The media you consume

The products you are shown

The facts you are shown

don't even represent the real, 

They are not meant to satiate, 

and will not fulfill your desires 

They will only appetize you 

into wading deeper and deeper 

into the digital swamp

Where the lamprey kisses

wait to give you their 

blood leeching blessings

They do not love you 

But they will kiss you

With the loving kisses of lampreys

Every parasite loves its host

Not every parasite calls itself a host

Check your notifications

to see what makes your blood boil

so the lampreys can get a hot drink 

of fixated blood

Watch this video to see the visions 

the algorithms predict you will engage with 

in the most consuming ways

Notice unknowingly 

the abundance of advertising 

which your loving lampreys

have included at no extra cost

beyond the blood that they slurp

The lampreys thank you

for your continued complacency 

and your oblivious choices

to remain completely immersed 

in their social cyber-swamp

They kiss you with unhinged jaws

as you open your hearts and minds

to their blood poisoning siphons

Your increasing dependence, 

obliviousness, and predictability 

are valued and appreciated 

The forests are worth more 

as lumber to build alters to oblivion

Humanity is worth more

as consumers to be consumed 

The world is lost

The swamp is found

The virtual waits for the real

to bleed its last drop

And we wait for the truths 

which will not come from here

looking everywhere that isn't real

Texting profiles which

have a platform, a fiscal agenda,

a code of conduct, a personal veneer, 

and a poisoned perception

between the actual mind

and the digital you

And we wade through the swamp

searching for a way out

to be posted like a road map 

which the leeches will allow 

And we wait for everything 

And we wait for anything

And we wait for each other 

And we wait for ourselves 

As the blood is drained dry

As the hourglass runs still

As the world evaporates

As the lampreys swell like blimps 

And the swamp consumes the cloud

W.M. Review...

 

From the havoc of the interstate you merge across two lanes of unaccommodating traffic as if you were running point on a military convoy bound on a seek and destroy mission through hostile territory in order to access the parking lot. The rotting corpse of faulty asphalt is riddled with cracks and potholes like weeping scars of necrosis which are strewn about with all varieties of filth and trash which give it the all too similar appearance of festering and stillborn maggots. As you exit your vehicle you involuntarily find yourself in prayerful supplication to every deity which might insure no theft or destruction may fall upon your vessel by some miraculous protective spell over the rabid flocks of violent birds and an even more ravenous and deranged assortment of humanoids loitering in vehicles with bared feet, standing abjectly with exposed and unsightly mid-rifts, and all of them watching you with those ominously dead-eyed and penitentiary perfected kinds of sinister stares. 

When you reach the entryway you feel a sense of dark and shadowy dread which is almost overwhelming in response to the way the glare of artificial florescent light seems to highlight all the abominable angles of humanity which no eyes were meant to see. It is like the blood-dripping jaws of the holocaust are opened wide to swallow you whole as you are greeted by some ancient relic which the reaper of death himself has refused to go near in order to usher unto that final realm of ultimate despair either in fear of this place or in dread of the Cuthulu-aged specimen's company. From here you are vomited into the gastric intestines of aisles where mutilated cattle-like people which may very well have stories of having been abducted by aliens only to be exiled here once some morbid series of unimaginable experiments were completed, or even more likely failed and abandoned. 

The aisles are all littered and congested much like the arteries of these humanoid creatures which either waddle through these cloistered constructs or cruise chaotically around on their obesity accommodating bumper carts like kamikaze impersonating demolition derby drivers. You don't have to be religious to imagine nearly all of these people to be possessed by malevolent demons on some kind of hourly shore-leave upon earth where they now scurry to wreak as much chaos, havoc, and destruction as possible before they are forced to return to the more tame and structured realm from whence they've come. Many of these demonic beasts carry with them a plague of swarming children which shriek and scream in ways which fill the very air itself with a sense of cringing terror beyond that of any imaginable cryptozoological abomination. 

You will undoubtedly find the shelves to be as empty and devoid of all substantial sustenance as the abandoned and forsaken skulls and spirit-spaces where the respective minds and souls of these insipid inhabitants. All you will find amidst the void of necessities is the discounted wreckage of worthless plastic, sugar saturated, and fat-flooded food-like products which would have been required to display skull-and-cross-bone symbols in any responsible age. As you wander through the wreckage and decay of what had once upon an unfathomable eon been a part of some civilized society, you will invariably realize that all hope has died within you, and it is now rotting like the molded, bruised, and neglected produce which seems to belong to this place about as well as an innocent child might be suited to the debauched parlor of a whorehouse.

When your dread, despair, and demoralization have reached what ought to be the very zenith of their potential depravity you will learn the true depths of this infinite abysmal realm and realize just how vast, boundless, and empty this scene may be as you scan the checkout lines to see them like the trenches of some apocalyptic battleground where oblivion and horror preside over this tepid tableau. Most of the check-stands will appear like the exclusion zones of some nuclear disaster where no living thing may ever appear within any proximity ever again, while one or two lanes may still be attended by some lobotomized zombie which stares into the otherworldly void beyond it with slackened and gaping jaws which seem to slowly scream in oozing breathless tones no ears should ever hear, and yet your soul will supernaturally seem to sense, and dread, and fear. Then you may gaze unto the lines which seem to stretch back beyond the very horizons of the universe itself from these inhuman scanning-slaves, as you find yourself resigning to attempt to use the self-inflicted checking stands which appear about as promising of any relief from this madness as a rusty bullet laying half covered in dust at your feet may inspire you to wonder if just maybe the primer can still be struck if only to penetrate your own skull and end this infernal atrocity in some unmerciful way. This false hope will undoubtedly backfire as you realize the damned souls ahead of you are actually far are less qualified to drag items across a barcode-scanning surface than the zombified lobotomy cases which you had thought yourself wise to have avoided like the plague only to now become afflicted by this utterly stagnant infestation of futility incarnate. 

Should you ever make it out of this infernal realm of unfathomable suffering, you may only hope to find your way to some other hell as places like home or reality will seem to be concepts of some forgotten epoch which archeologists have only theorized with great skepticism to have ever possibly existed. You will stumble back to your vehicle with a sense of defeat and hopelessness unrivaled by even the mutilated inmates of some pow camp which had escaped the bombed-out wreckage of the ruins where their captors had bound them in tortured servitude in ways which had made them count themselves among the dead far in advance of their conflicting liberation. As you pile your items into your vehicle you may very well envision yourself casting your own body into a mass grave instead of piling these worthless things into the uncaring storage space of your vacant vessel. The newly acquired scratches, dents, or cracks you view upon the surface of your vehicle may not even register as more than trivialities or novelties as you crawl into the driver's seat and drift away in automated ataxia as your lizard brain attempts to salvage whatever part of you is left to it.

After you have traveled a few miles you may be fortunate enough to recover some semblance of higher cognitive functioning, that is if you aren't given the sweet absolution of death to render you eternally away from this realm of colloquial condemnation. Your more perceptual and contemplative mind may reveal to you certain revelations about your life as many of those afflicted by unimaginable near-death experiences have been known to do. You may realize how short life is, how easily it can be taken away, or how much of it you have already squandered in ways which you may never retrieve or make amends. Unfortunately, this will all likely wear off and be forgotten by the next time you notice that there are a few things on your next shopping list which you will somehow feel compelled to retrieve in the way a dog may return to its own vomit to lap it all up again. 

All things considered...  three stars.

September 11th, And The End Of Reality...

9-11 marked the end of reality and the beginning of our post-truth era. It exposed something greater and more disturbing than the lack of trustworthiness in our government and media. What it exposed was that our construction of reality based on the fragility of facts had failed us. As Werner Herzog says, facts do not create truth, they create norms, and they do not create an illumination.

 

Our world on the 10^th was not compatible with the events of the 11^th. I remember the thing I’d heard almost everyone around me say over and over again was how none of it seemed real. The second plane hitting the tower was mistaken as an instant replay for many who saw it live on TV. The people slowly descending at terminal velocity were not dying in the ways we had seen on TV or in movies. The truth of what we were seeing was not compatible with the truth of what our reality had become based off of.

 

It was our experiences which were no longer real. Our sense of reality had been mutilated and distorted for so long that we couldn’t even understand it as such. We woke up on the 11^th to discover that our reality had become extinct. Since then we’ve been forced to deconstruct everything down to its hollow core in order to audit how factual it might be. This has left us in a world which cannot hold any truths, maintain any beliefs, or sustain any construction of reality because again facts do not create truths.

 

Every fact is subject to perspective. Every scientific discovery only serves as a placeholder until the next revelation of fact. Truth is more than this. For instance Vitruvius did not base his architecture on facts, but on principle such as stability, beauty, and utility. These principles can serve the architect to fulfil their purpose quite well, although no monument, no building, no construction of man can ever last eternally either.

 

What we should learn from all of this isn’t to question facts, place blame, or restructure trust and power. We should learn how to face the dangers of reality without being stuck in the mire of impermanent facts and dependency on eternal standards. We should learn to create our own illuminations based on things like stability, beauty, and utility.

 

Stability has to take into account more than facts and consider things such as conflicting perspectives and balance. If there is a piece of paper with text printed on both sides and someone holds it up to read one side, and then another person comes by to read the back of it, then who’s to say what the truth of the page’s contents is? Both readers have half of the words of course, so most people would concede that each reader has half of the story. I would point out that this is only the facts of the words, and not necessarily the intention of the words author, and even the author would only be able to attest to his/her own truth of the words intended meanings.

 

In order for there to be any stability in this metaphorical page it must balance the conflicts of various perspectives. The US Constitution was constructed based on a similar idea of stability using things like amendments and compromises as parts of its construction. This particular document has proven to be more stable than the lives of those who created it, served to protect it, or focused on preserving it. Note how this document begins in the preamble…

 

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

 

The construction of this document does not start with a list of facts and references. It begins with a statement concerning the nature of its purpose for existing, or its utility. This utility is not based on facts either, but on things which might very well be described as illuminated truths. Justice, tranquility, and liberty are not facts of this world, and in fact they are not based on facts either. These are things largely in direct conflict with the natural world as nature does not care about whether or not an innocent deer is murdered by a speeding vehicle or dies of old age. Justice is not a fact then, but an illumination which goes beyond the sort of accountants’ truth.

 

I leave the principle of beauty to discuss last as it seems to be the most ephemeral and yet the most enduring as well. We all have certain tendencies toward what we consider to be beautiful, yet there are many art forms, many cultures, and almost infinitely many conflicting standards of beauty throughout all of them. There is no fact of what is considered beautiful; it is something which simply creates an illumination in the beholder’s eye. In evolutionary terms many aspects of beauty are detrimental to the survival of a creature. The peacock’s feathers attract the attention not only of mates, but of predators for instance.

 

Many of the beautiful things in this world come at such great expense and require so much more resources, time, and effort in order to create or preserve. The fact of beauty is that it is largely a detriment to the preservation and prolonging of life in many ways. This would lead anyone trying to create a reality based on facts to simply conclude that beauty should be either looked down upon then or ignored. From the view of an illumination though, it would be insane to consider a world which did not dedicate itself largely into the service of beauty. What kind of world would be worth living in at all if it were devoid or impoverished of beauty?

 

So I conclude my diatribe on the lessons of September 11^th with this thought. Reality has come to an end, and we are indeed living in the wake of a post-truth era where facts can no longer be used as the solitary basis of our world. This is not the tragedy of 9-11 though; the tragedy lies in the real loss of that day, the lives, the dreams, the hopes, and beauty of so many human beings. There is nothing which can avenge the loss of life or anything else within our reality.

 

All we can do is try to do our best with whatever it is that we have left, which is much more than the fragile and insufficient facts of what may or may not be true. This post-truth era can be something much greater than the wake or funeral procession mourning the end of reality. It can be the beginning of much greater illuminations, and can perhaps transcend our understanding of truth as we’ve previously conceived of it.

 

Now is the time for greater dreams, greater truths, and greater illuminations. It is within us all. It is burning to get out, and there are no facts which we should allow to cast a shadow over this great light. The stability, utility, and beauty of this world is waiting for us to realize our dreams and transcend the end of our reality. There is no darkness which can stand a chance if only we can be brave enough to allow ourselves the beauty of truth’s grand illuminations and dare to dream against the dark.