IMPEDIMENTA
(or Buried Alive)
Cordoned off, physically, from Nature
by concrete, electronics and oil-based plastics,
their food, water and even air saturated
with pharmaceuticals and the chemicals of petro-agriculture,
children lack connection
not only to The Source,
but the source of self
within themselves.
Imprisoned behind the barbed wire of religion,
which claims a patent on rightness and wrongness,
the one Great Gift given us all, free will,
the arbiter of an intrinsic ethics, conscience,
is short-circuited in service to the purveyors
of greed, lust, fear, envy and hatred
who are themselves granted absolution and given free rein
to market these to children at their most impressionable age,
indelibly imprinting them with unthinking obeisance,
brand loyalty to products as well as to a nation,
and the willingness to put the bit in their mouths,
wear the saddle, and be easily ridden
by the status quo at the behest of an "elite"
which has nothing but contempt for them.
Children are made so afraid to trust themselves
that they early give up the power to make decisions,
and submit to an authoritarian Father Figure
who takes this frightful responsibility away from them
and the choices that children have left,
if that's what they could be called,
are all of them pre-arrayed and made
in the safe, sacred space of the mall.
And like the unwanted excrescences
of too-long tails and ears on "purebred" dogs,
extraneous on purebred, bio-engineered consumers
are the interconnections of human bonds
which are then prevented from reforming
by the application of cultural shock collars
which let children know they're straying from convention
and prompts shopping in which to find solace.
Children are taught to speak
by mimicking animals sounds,
"What does the cow say?" and to read
by rattling off their names. "C is for cow."
They're given pets with whom they bond,
but learn love and promises can be exchanged.
Should a more pleasing specimen come along,
the original is easily replaced.
Children also bond with animals in Farm Programs,
then sell them for slaughter, betraying them,
and take comfort in the profit they earn,
learning money trumps loyalty and friends.
Some children are sent out into the woods,
armed with high-powered weapons
with which they then hunt down and kill
their essentially defenseless animal friends.
This template for the eradication of feelings
via the extermination of beloved animals
is covered with the bandage of denial
and purges children of much of their humanity.
And this cold, cruel, callous psychology
is the epitome of American masculinity.
Love, friendship, fair play and promises,
gratitude and empathy are strictly for sissies.
