Like Winston Smith,
I think it’s time to start a diary.
Follow me now:  it’s April in Oceania,
The cruelest month,
The silly season, printemps,
A regular I see London, I see France.
I see Winston’s Underpants.
If you catch my drift?
La Primavera: Vivaldi’s rocking the
Juke box and the vote, Botticelli’s painting,
A mural on Jerusalem's wailing wall.
My diary will be hard evidence of thought crime.
Thought crime: one of the more severe varieties of
Religious experience & the most psychotic form of mental illness,
In a category known as antisocial personality disorders.
Thought crime means never getting into any serious trouble,
Until you’re caught, can we at least agree on that?
So, we'd better add the DSM to our stack of essential literary classics.
The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders,
Published by the American Psychiatric Association,
Providing a common language,
A shrink’s Esperanto.
DSM-IV codes classify mental disorders.
The DSM: a Frommer’s travel guide &
User’s manual for life on planet Earth.
So, like Orwell's Winston, I start a diary of my own; but
Unlike Mr. Smith, I address my message to the here &
What’s happening now, not the future, not the past but
N-a-zayer, N-a-zither NOW.
That's right, I write for the present:
“If thought was ever free, it is not free now."
If truth exists it is a closely guarded secret,
Although McLuhan’s observations hide in plain sight:
“The new electronic interdependence, recreates
The world in the image of a global village.”
Which makes us all global village idiots.
We are no longer different from one another;
The age of groupthink is here.
I write to you from an age of security & surveillance,
Warrantless search and predator drones,
An age where no man is ever truly alone.
From an age of standardization, replaceable parts,
Whirling dervishes, dabblers in spin control,
Newspeak and doublespeak,
Atlas shrugged, drugged and fugged,
The new world order:
All but the faint of heart need apply, …
*"I send greetings.”