On Cultural Memetics

All bullshit travels, so it seems,
In basic units known as "memes".
While poets think that they create
An individual world template,
But, in reality, what they do
Is pass their viruses to you.

And being its host, you're blind
To the infection of your mind,
As you just replicate each day
Some tired cultural cliché
Of pompous meme-enamored fools,
Who think they're brilliant and cool.

But bullshit's bullshit in the end,
That changes with each fad and trend,
Through meme mutation it's unseen
By mind's emerging meta-memes,
Which knows it can't fight with it--
For there is no vaccime for this shit.

You now feel trapped in a rubber room,
Where memes float by and go boom
Within the cells of tortured brain,
Drunk with conceptual champagne--
Like Buddha going through Hell,
That salivates to Pavlov's bell.

Where is my brain? Where are my shoes?
Where is the world I loved and knew?
Only these toxins of the mind?
Have I gone mad? Have I gone blind?
Have I forgotten what it means
To be a man with will and dreams?

And I walk out of the cave,
This land of freaks, this home of knaves,
This desert of conceptual hell,
Where love is gone and bullshit sells,
Yes I walk out once again--
Not as a membot, but a man.

 
  September 5, 2006
--Alexander Shaumyan