Surely, thou doth protest too much!

You only see
A fraction of the reflection.
Glancing sideways,
Schism’s delight,
Nothing beats a good horror movie
In the middle of a stormy night.

Watching the watchers watching
Is your paranoid delusion.
Still glued to the monitor
Keen on spotting each and every one of those
International Illuminati corporate collusions.
Closely following the wars and the riots,
Staking out your place in the greater game,
Quietly making your investments.
No one wants to be a pawn.
And everyone knows
The story is always the same…

Panic drives everything.

“Just be happy you’re home,”
She used to say,
Smiling from time to time,
“Would you bring me the bottle, dear?
I could use another glass of wine.”

You live,
Making love to a thousand late night TV shows.
Screens aglow with satiated smiles,
Plasma screams,
Emoting electronic impulses,
Spasms of pain you take for pleasure.
Your brain plugged in and online,
Strategically occupied
By an unending fare of
Man-made and natural CNN disasters.
Don’t look away and don’t touch that dial!
The stories produced and
Directed by the brothers Grimm, greed, and guile.

And bowing low to
This world so artfully dissected,
The only information
That you’ll ever get,
You are told,
Others would die to steal
And now it’s up to you to protect it.

Unmoved by any particular moment in time
You engage in your gear-like affirmations,
Lounging there in your bathrobe and underwear,
Insisting that everything is hunky-dory,
Behavior bordering on obsessive
Mechanical, to say the least,
Masochistic, sadistic, and slightly psychotic,
Depending on your
Subconscious need for control,
And that manic-depressive see-saw of evil verses good;
Something, they say, you may have acquired
On that rough and rocky road to adulthood…

But you’ve always been the forgiving type,
Haven’t you?

They are picking apart
The spokes of your wheels
As your world turns counter-clockwise,
Everything out of control.
I bet you still wish you had
Saved those silver dollars,
Buried them in a Mason jar
When silver was something special,
When currency was real.
When plastic held no supernatural power
Over people like us.

So which was worse?
All of that wasted faith in money and Wall Street,
The jealous neighbors at the bottom of the hill?
Having to decide who will be
Your primary health care provider?
Having to pay your taxes and utility bills?
All you wanted was some peace of mind,
A future as strong and bright as carbon-reinforced steel.

But they’ve been building warehouses and not factories, here,
Prisons and not electric cars or good schools
And sometimes you have to admit
You miss the good-old days of rock ’n’ roll.
And you begin to think,
There must be some sense to this insanity,
Some point of balance, at least,
In this “I told you so” society.
So what’s the deal?

Now you’re nodding to the break-man
As if it’s all his fault,
But you have no possible way of knowing
That the breaks are gone and the bridge is out.
Nothing can slow down this runaway train.
But you know oh, so well
No matter what happens,
You won’t be starting anything over again, not a thing!
At least not in this lifetime.

Your mantra,
How can it work for me?
How will I get my share?
I can only put up with so much crap.
And, ‘bout now, I don’t give a damn
About you or your mama!!




Michael S. True
12-15-13