Steve Benson

No Now    

We are surveilled by artificial intelligence

melding all known and unknown

information into a conglomerate paste

that binds the mind, affixes to structures

of biologically assembled realization and

inventiveness to doom us to stasis, to

laws and regimes of utility - using and

being used. Are you ready to die, or

do you prefer to become flotsam, excess

human tissue, to wait to be fed, worked,

made to sleep, and otherwise entertained

relentlessly, for good reason, from their

point of view, they who seek to dominate us

and won't see this as violence, since they

don't want to accuse themselves when you

are still hanging around like an albatross

from their necks, getting ready to be blamed

for being violently lazy and unproductive,

or for reacting with vitality, a dangerous

enemy of the state, the state that says

it keeps you alive?

Segmentation. Sleep.

Like a rehearsal at which

no one knows their own lines,

though others' are all too familiar,

like curly hairs growing longer

in our ear canals. We can own that

together. The best possible beat for

giving the furniture air space,

panels of heat notwithstanding.

(It seems (to me)) Impossible to

imagine the past 500 years without

colonization. We've been under a spell

cast out of nowhere by war and

profit, by people who relish

domination as achievement, who

believe it may keep them safe, not

knowing better,  whst kind of truth

counts. Obligations. Choice is to see

Go on, sweetie, complain. Tell

the bad man what they've done

to you, one man is all the men,

heartless when death of the other

is possible, and you are the man's

other, aren't you, ripe for murder.

Murder's glamorous, glorious,

gracious, ghoulish, and gotta be

tolerated, making the society safe

to regress into the masked,

massed, unknown

Words fail me.

Or is it only ... is it

only ... I fail words.

I fail to see or hear them.

All are set-ups for betrayal.

Go home. In this kind

of society, nothing is answered.

Nothing is seen or heard.

Everyone thinks of

death, surveillance, bombs

going off, the abrupt end

to certainty and uncertainty

all rules and assumptions

An angry huckster has

assumed the throne with

an epithet for any dissent.

Silence is the code word

for alarum

What answer do you hold there

in your ice cream, skipping lines

and neglecting the melting puddle

across your shirtfront, where

justice waits, spinning coins

across the pond, the crick,

the puddles' pools. I try not

to be fancier than I need to

be to ride on toward a sunset

eclipsing movement itself

What products do I want? It

is too late for more products

I want only process, processes,

Desires have misled and

held true for me too

You go back to beginning

to try to understand what

your approach was in the

first place. This is not mystical

but I forgot, the seed was lost,

lust, dependent on the conditions

then operant in the environment.

Profit was never the objective,

always a deadening fantasy.

You wake up in the arms

of a belligerent robotic

gorilla, who wants only

to be your only friend

The over-ripening (and rot)

of neoliberalism. The new

fad in slop. Ersatz in formation

to conquer, decimate, decorate,

desecrate all sorts of dignity.

The license plate thing. Not

everyone can become a citizen.

Some are obliged to be

excess superfluities vacant of

nationhood, rights, hungry for status

still subject to change without notice

From here in the projected sanctity

of my own home, I link these words

on this old pad from some hotel chain

Clumsily they fall I topple The state

remorselessly

masks, otherwise forbidden, casual,

no expense spared. What

will become of these spectral men

when no longer paid to waylay

and demand, escort, shove, and take

you and me into their nondescript

limos of no certain make or style?

How splintered by their work

will their dreams have become, what

pensions of blame and jeopardy may

remunerate them on the flip side of sworn

and ostensible contradictory duties?

Suicide. Survive. Expatriate.

Get real. Get over yourself. Urgent.

Militias versus military. To

anticipate, to identify a warning

a threat a prediction a plan

already well under way. If

there is a way out, just what

advantage is there to using it,

to whom, staying? In what forms

do you resist? Promote them

hard. Do we fight the imposition

of tyranny by getting booked

for not getting out of the way?

Does policing reactions connect us

while refocusing for divergence

 in our "views"? Does our fast affect

their starvation? Everything

happening at once, repeatedly, daily,

epochally, maintenance, breakage,

career moves, death, and institutional

collapse. Are you following me?

Alright, go right ahead. Right away

Weeds. Patches of weeds

are Band-Aids. Pancakes. Destroy

all similes. They are misleading

weeds. Among the weeds are

often various distinct species.

Not all are so destructive.

A moment of silence for

the newly dead reminds us

of those already or long dead

and of impending deaths

of all we know and love,

including the anonymous,

our neighbors, inspirational

individuals, our friends

relations and ourselves

and our memories. We are

always preparing to die,

perhaps never fully or

persistently prepared, but

working on it, across a plethora

of ways and means, many

necessarily contradictory

The truth is muddy.

Everything is related.

Remember where your bulwarks

are, their weight, your burden,

their extent, depth, height,

and purposes. Anything that

happens sustains multiple

effects. What does "sustains"

mean in that sentence? Lost?

Does that include things

that you do, make, acquire,

intentionally, knowingly, or

otherwise? Burrs that stick

to your pants legs in the

autumn forest? What if your

handwriting grows illegible?

Clock time. The two-minute

timer. The time it takes an egg.

To get up in the morning

and get ready to read a poem, the news.

One day he read several of them

in a row, from one and the same

book to many books. Another day

the same one poem many times

in a row. Why stop? Fatigue, distraction,

maintenance tasks, hunger, something

unscheduled. Walk down the path

about 1:30 in a lunar eclipse

wearing canvas uniform as costume

for no reason but compulsion, custom,

voices, embarrassment. Is it safe

there, down there, in the woods,

down that path, where things grow

round the clock, some by morning,

some only in the depths of night?

Okay, seriously, what have we got

now? I dreamt Obama was in the house,

looking good, after some difficulty

with arranging his flights. I've still got

that tooth guard stuck in my mouth.

The sun's out, the leaves are still

growing, air is percolating through them.

Sometime I've got to call to order more

heat for the winter. Dems in Congress

drop like flies, they should have quit

months or years ago, I'm told. Who

does the  math? Some people like

the big book. What about tyranny? Take

advantage of the world order to launch

chaos and take advantage of that every

way possible, to crumble later, after the

big boys, the super-rich, believe we're in

control of everything needed to cut out

for good and set up a happier oasis on

stolen land someplace else

Beliefs are terrifying, leading us

into peril, an escalator going

down. Do animals cope with

belief systems, where intangible

prophesies, predictions, preoccupations,

prejudices, and perpetual motion's

contractual dynamics crowd and

eulogize one another in the vast

turmoil of a negative dialectic?

What's that? Sounds good. It

could refer to a universal law

of social science, if we have those.

Tension held up, never to be

resolved. Fist ant thesis, second

third thesis, press red button,

cover the eyes before too late

to know without seeing, to emerge

with memories washed out, preserved

in amber, the capsize of a happy

ending, the uncomfortable tangle

with any other, or that degraded

foul tempered other in every one

If I take a moment to think on it,

I can write something down, notes

about it, if my brain hand and

instrument can cooperate in that,

however imperfectly. The choices

we make about what to believe

may be predicated on just what

we are unwilling to believe. Does

one feel better focusing on dissed

beliefs, like denying corals die in

salty seas absorbing carbons from

the air? Do they exist? So many

scientists have been mistaken in

the history of humankind.

If a problem isn't real, you have no

responsibility but to debunk it,

and ignorance stands in for bliss

No headlines. Nothing

changes.  There's a new decree out

to that effect. I've got an itch.

Who will it come to profit?

People don't often work out the trick

to exploit their own personal bodily

distress for lucrative gain, too often

settling for pity or comfort, but

we can pride ourselves on using

other people's pain for our own gain.

Still, I have an itch, in the palm of my hand.

The annual holiday parade did all the same

make a headline, as usual. What did you

do out there? Nothing. Nothing worth

mentioning. Feasts, games, debaucheries

typical of this time of year, now on screens.

Later, weather permitting, we will patronize

the occasional live and in person local talent.

We eat out for a change. On his next birthday,

the omnipotent leader anticipates a vast parade

of lethal arms, his stolen property, across

symbolic swathes of founding stolen property.

My simultaneous birthday belongs in the trash

When someone says

what they want, are they

ordering it, claiming it?

I had thought that wanting had to do with

feelings, desires, but I'm hearing it used

lately as policy, or as personal imperative.

You, Mr. President, I speak to

you who have set your own precedent,

so dramatically, in your own every term,

what do you want? And will you,

can you, ever actually get it? Perhaps

you only want to stay in the game, which

means always loving and pushing to outdo,

overwhelm, disempower, and stomp

on others. Who else wants what you

 want? Acquiring more and more

loyal sycophants and billionaires

and strongmen loyal only to themselves,

it's not you, finally, creating havoc,

but this system, the very system that

isolates you from the people and insulates

you among an affluently cloistered few

who choose to seem to follow you

and on TV, how can you know how

preposterous  and untenable your

proposals and decisions have to be?

Hand in glove. It fits, it lasts. The Israeli

political establishment, begun in terrorism

against the British occupation, and against

the indigenous "Arab" population, maintains

this commitment to its original orientation.

Today state terror serves to gin up a massive

belligerent oppression of its captive population,

experimental subjects without informed consent

in new and improved tests of surveillance,

weaponry, and tactics of urban counterinsurgency,

which Israeli industry and state accomplices

can flog for sales to governing juntas

and corporate powers the world over

as tried and proven, evidence-based systems,

devices, and methodology to control, imprison,

and otherwise disempower those it would keep

under duress as less than human. So too we find

U.S. police train in Israel on the most advanced

strategies, skills, and equipment they can hope

to make useful stateside and in other

bordered spaces of occupancy to manage

homeless, hungry civilians reduced to penury,

their immune systems all but collapsed, but not dead

yet. The present genocide cooperatively

imposed by the U.S. and Israel provides

an effective model for widespread application

in our nation and around the world.

What we witness today in Gaza and the West

Bank is imminent here, as our economic

and legal scaffoldings crash into unreason,

and everywhere, humans still seek security.