Lightning strikes to reveal the masses marching in time to the ceaseless war drums.
Wave upon wave
Relentless.
Grim determination as the flag unfurls
A crimson scar
A blood soaked star.
Banner of the dispossessed,
United in our march to the gallows.
An octopus
A hydra.
Faceless, formless and unrelentless.
The cancer is growing.
Its too late to operate.
Feel the tendrils wrap ’round your throat.
Kill one and a thousand take his place.
The future is ours and you are not going to like it.

You set yourselves at the mercy of anyone and anything that keeps you from having to take responsibility for your life.

Its the president’s fault, its Satan’s fault. Its your coworker’s fault. The unions, the conspirators, the Illuminati…

But its never your fault.

You’re just a victim. You didn’t have the luck, the genes, the connections. Your not worthless, you’re just oppressed.

‘They’ did this to you. Those bastards. If you had the chance, you’d make them pay. You’d… you’d… you’d… what?

Beat them to a bloody pulp like you do your worthless kids and wife? Scream obscenities at them like you do that fool at the nail salon? Or just cower, wimpering, and continue to accept whatever ‘they’ think is good for you?

You’re an idiot.

Keep devouring the bullshit. Smile. Swallow. Good.

Welcome to the rest of your life. You don’t deserve anything else.

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There is no end in sight.

We consume, we are consumed and we consume more to compensate: Little more than Id’s and libidos, mindless, propelled from one compulsion to the next. This is the age of the impulse buy.

If its not for sale we don’t want it, but if its easily marketable, if there are focus groups and audience polls, if we can feel that somehow we have control over the megolithic manufacturers, we take it as a victory when really we are picking our coffins. We desperately cling to the symbols, catch phrases and slogans of everything around us. It must be distilled for us to find it palatable; it must be catchy, artificially sweetened and totally devoid of meaning. We refuse to acknowledge the gaping maw of the abyss waiting just around the corner, refuse to learn out of fear that we may realize just how little we know.

The muck grows to cover our minds like a second skin as we lay unused, unstimulated, having forsaken our own evolution. We assume that we are the highest species, that any further growth is unnecessary, we believe that this truly is the ‘best of all possible worlds’ and rush out to get there before the doors open to buy as much as we can. And even those cognizant of the ever-downward spiral are no better off. They cannot functionally remove themselves from the cycle. And so, whether they will it or not, they too are consumed.

Flesh rent from bone, marrow slurped out, until there is well and truly nothing left.

Then, one day, in the midst of the daily regurgitation of this truth a man spoke up from the crowd “Doesn’t mean people won’t buy it anyway”. And verily, the people saw that it was true, that they would rather be deceived by appearances than worry about content, character or any other multi-syllabic ‘c’ words.

And there, the first anarchist, the first Deophagist is remembered with his smirk of self-satisfaction, exposing his nether regions to the prude and incontinet, middle fingers extended in the universal salute.

Doubt causes Sorrow
Sorrow feeds Remorse
Remorse seeks Penitance
Penitance leads to Bondage.
Let Doubt consume you
And in the pit of your Remorse
You will find the embrace of Damnation.

And at the crossroads
Of your greatest Fears
And gravest Doubts
Beyond Redemption or Damnation
Grinning into the face of Oblivion
You will find the upraised middle finger of the Deophagist

Everyone plays out like the shadow-cast of a B movie: Detached, delayed, copycatting a second too slow. They are dried uplike rasins at the bottom of the box; non-entities, ghosts, phantasms of their own deluded imaginations. The melodrama of the mundane, a day is year is a lifetime of broken-souled sighs. McDonalds, Starbucks, the purgatory of medicority; Politics, poorly choregraphed prime-time pornography. There is no more art when you are worried to the point of hysterics where the next pair of shoes will come from, what bottled water to drink, and whether we are being humane and tolerant twoards our lunchmeat, herded like cattle to the gallows of the T.V screen, smiling our way from store to store, the shit-eating grin dripping down greasy multiple chins. Who can sell the sweetest lie? Slit our wrists to feed the beast of more-more-more: Give us quantity or give us death.

It’s all the same in the end: We’ve sold our souls to the flat screen t.v and the god of ‘Grande Lattes’, we waste our hatred in violent masturbation and celebrity poker; and have to be the one who wins the Three Stooges colostomy bag on Ebay. Forgive me for not giving a shit.

I’ll take my cancer, my cholestorol, my crooked teeth and coke habit. I’ll devour the hatred, fear, pain, sorrow, grief, regret, impulsive behaviour, and compulsive fabrication. Stop hiding behind your ten-dollar words and Gap apparel: Use your fists, dicks, and slits: lose your temper. Hate me; it feels so good doesn’t it? I am the thing you loathe inside yourself, the blue-collar worker with an axe to grind, nothing to lose and “anger management issues”. I pity you.

We are all obsessive-compulsive gluttons in denial, zombie cannon fodder, junkies, consumer-whores and sluts with a guilty conscience. Self-imposed slavery, mass-produced misery, every lust accompanied by a ‘Hail Mary’ and flagellation. Betrayal of self is the original sin, the greatest sin, the only sin.

And sinners, aren’t we all.

Everything becomes rectified by its opposites, lest one force grow too complete as to stifle change. Evolution, adaptation, growth… These do not survive in extremism. It is the too drastically mutated which are delivered still-born. Instead, the dynamics of life are better shown as slight variation along the line of perfect balance, opposing forces surrounding the equal sign, the karma of the Buddhists and Hindu. Nature, and so too life, abhors a paradox, and so all must in the end be its own beginning and its own end. For life cannot come from death or vice versa. Every man and woman is a star in the sky, a god in their own right, but who reaches out and exerts their will? Every man and woman is a scar upon the surface of the earth and the surface of their own minds. All division is multiplication and subtraction, addition. This is the deepest riddle. Between the lines of what is said, between the thoughts which one perceives beyond the text, there lies void. But without Void there is no Creation.

He who has ears let him hear, he who has eyes let him see