Conceptual Insulin

Conceptual Insulin

After a decade or two of pro-forma numbers,
suck-up-journalism, and war becoming the theater-
of-war, terrorism starts bringing you that old pay-per-view
in sensurround.

And demonstrating the classic symptoms of mind-candy-
diabetes, you start jonesing to shoot up some
conceptual-insulin.

The pollution of history surges past like so much
urban-storm-water-runoff:
the orthographic complexities of the-"N"-word,
General Baccus' "philosophical-differences" with Guantanamo
"interrogations", EPA hazardous-waste-databases swirling away in some
Koyanisqaatsian twilight-of-the-real.

Despite your mortgaged life's coming with significant
prepayment-penalties,
the war-salesmen are still on every channel hawking
an Iraqi Hirohito, or an Iraqi MacArthur,
and name-checking Halabja like one of Aesop's
fables.

It out-Orwells
Orwell. It out-Kafkas
Kafka. It simply outs
Pete Williams. Remember the Maine.
Remember the Alamo. Remember 9-1-1. And you say,
what does Allende or Pinochet have to do with anything,
with the price of Baghdad-tea in Pyongyang? With non-denial
denials-of-service? With no-child's-left-
behind? With a dimwit for president single-handedly refuting
intelligent-design,
by example?

Now that the latest image-campaign has rebranded bribery as a truth-
commission,
now that we enforce amnesia to remember only the Passover massacres of our
choosing,
now that we've accustomed ourselves to the spectacle of the West Bank as a stay-at-home
concentration-camp,
Palestinians taken-out, a la Ze'evi,
like lice,
who needs to cavil about the innocent few like Daraz Khan,
or Veronica Bowers, shot down by the omniscience of an un-manned-
drone?

The Falwell Wahhabi-wannabes preach abstinence-
education, not so much teaching against sex, as abstaining against
teaching. CNN is satellite-bouncing their pedagogy straight
into Castro's kitchen, an NTSC bazaar of rightwing follies, and
lip-synching triple-speak doubletalk decked out in all the
synchronized majesty of a plutogogical
June Taylor Dancers.

Someone is declaring the U.N., declaring international law
irrelevant. Someone is canceling the FBI investigation of
Abdullah bin Laden. Someone at a CIA funded terrorist-
think-tank is lecturing on total-quality-
terrorism and asking, who is
the customer?

And Castro wonders "do they need school vouchers
for this? I mean, call me a neo-Luddite, but since when is murder
an assisted-martyrdom-operation? Preemptive-
counterproliferation, preemptive-retaliation, my Bay-of-Pigs
ass."

And from his permanently insecure location,
Saddam Hussein is watching Wolf Blitzer,
and the sentencing of Noelle Bush from his
gold-fixtured toilet,
squeezing his Charmin.
He feels like Peter Sellers, but
isn't certain whether it's Strangelove,
or Chance the Gardener:
either he wants to change the channel,
or blow this whole we'll-meet-again thing
up. But he's 100% sure, George W.
is inspector Clousseau.

And you, me,
etherized like a patient spread out on
300 channels of fiberoptic sky,
glue-eyed to this electronic
civilization, this pyramid of lightbulbs:
industrial-glass surrounding
a flagrant thread of heavy metal,
encased in engineered
vacuum.

Does it shine, does it
go out, does it oppose the current,
does it flicker in doubt?
Does it shatter,
will it burn,
does it electrocute,
can it learn?
Does it persuade,
does it corrode,
does it dream,
ever so peacefully,
or surging with power preemptively,
does it explode?

----- Terry Provost