kudos to TIME

see note for reviewers.

nothing solidifies a movement

like the commercialization &

exploitation of its members---

watch them be plastered,

nameless & stirring in the moment

as if next year will be different---

for this year’s
“TIME magazine’s person of the year” is

“the protestor”---

and the story plays out

with clapping hands from the establishment

here in the bosom of world hegemony

“america the beautiful”

whose talons grip the throats of every uprising

to twist & maim

before the final gouging of its eyes &

the go in for the blood---

how quickly those resisting their tyrants in the

middle east will become new peasants

servile to the dominant hand of

“the land of the free”---

suck their oil!

develop their markets!

until they

walk, talk, look & act like

good little americans.

 

on the homefront

the occupiers of streets across the nation

now go into hiding when

the cold winter blows

reportedly gearing up their strategies

for a lively spring & summer of our

own---

TIME does its job

putting an anonymous member on the cover

in order to show a passing fad,

as if to say

“we are with you”

(that is, until next year when something else,

new & fresh replaces you)---

with featured articles speaking of

anonymous

as if they too, will go away by next year

so that the whole need

to resist,

to upturn &

to change the status quo here in the

empire,

will be commodified &

sold to kids like the next version of

xbox.

 

kudos to TIME

for selling their magazine

like good little

do-what-they’re-told

capitalists,

but such an attempt will not suffocate

the voices of those who can no longer rest &

such an attempt will not put out

the fire.

 

Author's Note

“We have to create culture, don't watch TV, don't read magazines, don't even listen to NPR. Create your own roadshow. The nexus of space and time where you are now is the most immediate sector of your universe, and if you're worrying about Michael Jackson or Bill Clinton or somebody else, then you are disempowered, you're giving it all away to icons, icons which are maintained by an electronic media so that you want to dress like X or have lips like Y. This is shit-brained, this kind of thinking. That is all cultural diversion, and what is real is you and your friends and your associations, your highs, your orgasms, your hopes, your plans, your fears. And we are told 'no', we're unimportant, we're peripheral. 'Get a degree, get a job, get a this, get a that.' And then you're a player, you don't want to even play in that game. You want to reclaim your mind and get it out of the hands of the cultural engineers who want to turn you into a half-baked moron consuming all this trash that's being manufactured out of the bones of a dying world.”

―Terence McKenna