Lest We Forget 

Tyranny is time worn - many different faces.  

Repression too familiar - far too many places.  

Geographic idiom - absolute power phrases.  

Command form <<-ISM!>>  

    Nihil-Catholic-Capital-Marx  
      Protestant-Commun-Totalitarian- <<-ISM!>>  
Kow-Tow Seizure. Seig Hell Caesar--  

Hail! Untouchable. Brown Shirt Uniform Cant--  

Conform! What a System: Caste, the Party Line  

    STOP. Right where you are. Political  
Power is temporal; the Iron Fist, rusting.  

An electronic glove the greater concern:  

Minds shackled and bound by television cables.  

Soft tyranny of trance.  

Psycho-motor-interrupt.  

Hypno-program-image dance. The power of  

    Suggestion.  
Where submission reigns and Nielson sweeps the multitudes  
    onto co-axial cattle cars bound to the greatest gulag of all:  

    Choose a channel; don't leave the room; stare into the light;  

    swallow a message; accept; consume.  

A slow-burn holocaust, voluntary lock up, mental arrest,  
    myriad millions shoot up cadmium rays, tubular, vassals serfing 
      
    virtual lifetimes away like moths to artificial moonlight, lost  

    in a nether world satellite dream dishing double-dose docility,  

    domestic gridlock automat: compliant component servility.  

Take the hook. Toe the line. Forget you were a thinker.  

Surrender in mind drone; parallel park the video zone;  

    passive become the universal clone.  
Forget that rapping at your door. This is the world at a remove,  
    the land of never, never, never more! (Lest we forget.)  
  

-Matthew Berrien Smith, 1994  
 
 
 
 
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