Shamone!
Bullied by the big-daddy Joseph of social media
to perform, perform, perform; feeling at home,
released from the otherwise constant anxiety,
only really on the posting stage; minds marinated
from birth in hyperviolence and hypersexuality
(radical porn, scat-focused preggo gangrapes,
only one click away against a backdrop of hits
whose lyrics go “I'll beat yo' ass then fuck yo' man /
I take yo' nigga, put this pussy on his tongue /
Deep-throatin' dick, I got cum all in my lungs”);
light pollution, alcohol, sabotaging restorative sleep;
whacko faces, butt implants, to stay one step ahead
of our body dysmorphia (even if it means appearing
like a member of some new puffy species, alienated
from the “Man in the Mirror”); hormones, surgeries,
for “clarity” to our “true” selves; severe sensitivity
(manifested in dogpiling and in HR-DEI reporting
and in blood-baying classroom-airport tantrums)
over any criticism or statistic opposing “my truth”;
normalized self-absorption, normalized gullibility
to wild conspiracy theories (Hollow Earth, US led
by extraterrestrial lizards in shapeshifting disguise)
and to superstitions (wearing child-labor tiger eye
for courage while saying with vocal-fried surety
“Scorpios are, like, super jealous and secretive,
like unless their moon sign is Sagittarius or Leo”);
germaphobia so pervasive that surgical masks
are now normal beyond China, wearing them alone
in cars; pharmaceutical cocktails to get up and down,
to kill any pain; botoxed shut ins, drug-propped
with comfort animals, life-extension obsessed;
hiding away in neverland bubbles where no one
can challenge us, where we can be Spiderman
or a furry kid forever in safe-space playhouses;
communicating only with our glitter families,
who affirm self-identifications each day wilder
to shoo away reminders of our looming death,
who identify wound collecting with healing,
who see validation as a basic need like water,
who equate being easily hurt with being moral,
who dehumanize disagreers beyond the bubble,
who regard disagreement as a form of gaslighting,
who equate victimization with competency,
who think the past excuses present behavior,
who believe star signs are keys to self-awareness,
who righteously shout down whatever is unsettling,
who feel vilification is the best way to express dislike,
who think truth should never interfere with justice,
who see criticism as a form of persecution,
who control others to regulate their own emotions,
who believe emotional fragility is to be indulged,
who surround themselves with social-media memes
like “Cut him off if he doesn’t see you as perfect”
and “I am enough: I don’t deserve to be criticized”
and “I love myself too much to let intent untrigger me”
and “Jokes don’t help trauma: trauma isn’t a joke!”
and “Your ‘facts’ are not allowed in my space!”
and “No one but me decides what truly harms me”
and “I will not be abused in the name of comedy”
and “I will not be abused in the name of education”;
demanding sanitized reading lists and alternatives
to triggering college topics (slavery, white men);
alienated from the dying (quick to sweep away
the child body that falls from the mall balcony before
any skip in the “Wanna-Be-Startin’-Somethin’” beat
of buy-buy-buy, the body prepared not by parents
too death queasy to sit and lie with it at home
and to rub and kiss and wash and dress it right,
but by Starbucked strangers in a room of steel);
in love with the young; sickened by the old
(their criticisms, their wisdom, their decay,
how naked they can look like melted candles);
Peter-Pan behavior (evident from the upsurge
in “adult coloring books” and in “safe rooms”
where we can sniff lavender and pet fluffy things,
animals and teddy bears, if “activated” even
by campus speakers we are not forced to see)—
Michael Jackson was a weathervane, a prophet.
“We need books that affect us like a disaster, that grieve us deeply, like the death of someone we loved more than ourselves, like being banished into forests far from everyone, like a suicide. A book must be the axe for the frozen sea within us.”—Kafka (against the safe-space cancel culture pushed by anti-art bullies, left and right).
