"panopticon" poems
If Thoughts Were Audible,
Would you try to catch & make
Every fluttering thought your Bible,
In your craving
To come face to face
With that one thought
Which would have the answer
To what is the question,
That has gnawed at you since birth.
What if you bumped against
Hitherto infrasonic tremors
Of a morbid sigh or curse,
While hoping to tune into
A blessing or yearning,
Would you consider yourself
The ****** of the Panopticon
Or a prisoner of it?
Would the nail-biting curiosity
Of groping the trail
Of fragmented thoughts
From all (how many?) corners
Make you lose your own 'stream of consciousness',
as they would call it?
Deaf now to your own mental utterances
Would you (n)ever speak again?
[Since,
Your eavesdropping mind
Would already know
What the other has to say
As would he, about your thoughts
Before either uttered the first syllable.]
Or,
Would you start thinking
About what to think first
And what order to place those thoughts in, next,
So you could fool your mental trespasser,
Sending him off to a parallel trail of thoughts?
But of course he would be able to
Hear through your strategy
As he would also know
Of that moment
When you decided to
Guard your own thoughts.
But the question is,
Do you have any left, now?
A numb stare is reflected
In your mental neighbour's eyes
As you both confront
The fact that
*Deaf people don't have
Songs stuck in their head.*
Sep 16, 2014
Sep 16, 2014 at 12:59 PM UTC
Where are the prisoners?
Where are the guards?
Watching. Ever watching.
Light floods this cubicle, and
Shadows entangle themselves in my sheets, while
The omnipresent and intangible eye gazes.
Devoid of visibility, only
The gloom confides in me.
The power of perfection entrapped in a hoop.
Our ring encircles the guardian, who
Is invariably stalking. Plagued
Are the confined and deserted lepers.
But what of the locks?
Locks? The tower is our bolt.
The eye will find the madman.
Madness is also our disease,
Guilt triumphs over futile attempts, the
Belief is our ideology.
Indisputable solidity becomes imaginary, while
The goal is communal. We must,
Survive in a personal Panopticon.
Mar 26, 2012
Mar 26, 2012 at 11:31 PM UTC
I foresee at day, not distant,
when armed drones patrol our skies.
Where people labelled dissidents
will be killed without a trial.
In the cities of the future
walls and ceilings will be glass.
Big brother will be watching
like George Orwell once forecast.
In the future called panopticon
You never will feel free.
You will never know whose watching
and you won't know what they see.
If equality of outcomes
is your wish and fervent prayer-
go and lie down in some graveyard
You'll be sure to find it there.
Otherwise, arouse yourselves
before it is too late.
Don't be a useful idiot
to an overreaching State.
Go ask the Pakistanis
about the war that never ends
Ask how they've been treated
( and we label them our "friends")
The drones we use in Pakistan
will soon be loosed on you.
Will you enjoy a tyranny
of the many by the few?
Feb 19, 2013
Feb 19, 2013 at 6:14 AM UTC
Tax man been comin’ round my door
What the hell from me he wanting for?
Old man saying there been riots in the streets
That this just the price to pay for civil society
Young man laughs at the foolish game
The Hebrews cried out, "Give us a King!"
there can be no rule by reason, only trust in God
but the people cry out for the human bond
With a warning, the TRUTH spoke out a roar
He will enslave your sons and send them off to war
he will take the best of your best, and keep your stock as his own
only trust in Me, and the order will form
a higher dimension that no mortal can conceive
Believe my people, please believe
forget the untruth of the safety lie
The world is chaos, and you will surely die
No man can save you from this eternal fate
so why not live free in your given days?
There is a plan within our shared channel
Let's trust in that and see the thought forms dismantled
some call it the system
Authority, man
Taking from you, all that they can
Giving back, what isn't theirs to give
We can work together and surely live
Free of the tax man, his burden is forced
deny him the money
that unquenchable thirst
Necessary evil, some will say
Look at coercion, monster I'll slay
They preach peace while practicing War
Nixon targeted Peaceniks to settle a score
don't be fooled by the rebranding attempts
the new boss is the old boss
time and time again
Our fathers are tired, so let's give them a rest
Usher in the New World
give it our best
Jan 26, 2014
Jan 26, 2014 at 6:09 PM UTC
She's always misplacing.
Feeling for new incongrunces
I try to be pragmatic, & feel for her supple fingers.
These are the parameters of an injured human being.
A prosaic heart, A tenuous mind.
I have fallen into the pit of her idiosyncrasies.
A man on a mission seeking to breathe & expand my spirit into her lungs.
Her nature corrupts my own,
And like a troglodyte, I disperse my emotions into a prism.
A prism that is now full of turmoil & suspicion.
Oh wonderful, wonderful you..
Apr 9, 2017
Apr 9, 2017 at 9:54 PM UTC
I've grown rusty and unused to summoning words from a blank page - but FINALLY - there's something new to describe. School (11th grade) is over - at last - and... more.
There's a party tonight - a REAL, honest-to-God, in person, PARTY - for about 30 of us. Yes, vaccinations are documented. Life seems to be beginning again.
I'm eager, like a boxer before the bell or a racehorse at the starting gate. I'm an animal, long constrained, who knows it's about to be set free.
I'm as disorientated as an awakened dreamer and I find myself laughing, drunk with possibilities as I try on clothes for preliminary impressions.
It's hard to quash tremors of impatience.
I'm sick of helpless, indifferent, pandemic necessity.
I'm SO tired of boredom, circling me like a vulture, in my panopticon palace - that I opted for a respite of pure terror - I'm SO clever.
I'm skipping my senior year of high school and heading off to university. I'd rather die than risk spending another year in my room(s) - I almost went crazy.
There's a paper on my desk, white as a bride. It says "ACCEPTED for fall term 2021."
I’m trying not to let on that I’m afraid. Is desire always a tangle of impossible, contradictory impulses?
I've decided that my life is my only real possession - my own, small, life-or-death riddle to solve.
I want to live with intent, like I'm aimed at something and I'm going to chase happiness like it could be caught.
My luggage is open - like alligator jaws. I stare into those tan, Ghurka depths - rigid with anxiety.
My sister (home on vacation from her surgical residency) sees me eyeing the empty bags.
"Are you worried?” She says, “You look worried."
I normally find the sister-teacher-coach vibe irritating, but now, somehow, it seems reassuring.
"No," I lie - then - "A bit," I admit, close-lipped.
But that's a later worry =]
Jun 13, 2021
Jun 13, 2021 at 5:34 PM UTC
I fell into the pit
Of sadness and doubt
All because of this thing
Called society
I tore out myself
And shredded the things
That used to define me
All because they told me I can't
Be who I wanted to be
But society doesn't change
They judge you for who you are
And who you aren't
It's a prison
And we cannot escape it
Mar 19, 2014
Mar 19, 2014 at 1:02 AM UTC
I have an extra dry sense of humor
up here in the most sarcastic city in the country
Down south, they just can't figure it out
They think I'm dumb or
should be institutionalized for the things I say that
they just take to heart with 6 grade reading levels at best
There's no forethought, let alone critical analysis afterwards
Down there
you say what you mean or paint on fake niceties
You leave all the **** talking for when this or that person
leaves the room
There's no cold distance
Strangers will ask where you go to church
No respect that folks may have better things to do
A panopticon of middle school gossip and small talk
so you're never alone
I wish my brother never left
He came back and won't talk to me
after I gave his complaining back to him
in too clever remarks
In Carolina, you're lucky if they get it
on the drive back home
Jan 26, 2024
Jan 26, 2024 at 3:43 PM UTC
trapped within brick walls of red
and all the quarrelling voices in my head
not a single way of escaping
silent surroundings chaotic mind
for i am a prisoner who hears no one
but myself declined
i am a prisoner stuck in my own soul
but who am i to say such thing
when my conscience is as hollow as can be
my guilt never-ending like the sea
eighty-five bars of steel ceiling
not letting a single trace of light go through
not letting in a single blessing
or a single chance of hope
frozen and cold
like my prisoner heart
innocent on the outside
and a sinner inside
having endless of freedom in the world
but not in my own mind
which is about a hundred times worse
-djs
May 28, 2013
May 28, 2013 at 9:12 PM UTC
flailing arms in air
as we revolve around the sun
the devil
works to hide the god in us
via panopticon
Nov 3, 2010
Nov 3, 2010 at 10:18 PM UTC
We're all stuck
In this panopticon
They promise us
Work will make us free
But they've lied about everything
So far
In the ***** ghettoes
Death was a fickle friend
My mom held me tight
And told me that everything
Would be just fine
But her last intake of breath
Was a poison
That overtook her lungs
And everything
Is not fine
And I'm starting to wonder
What freedom are they promising
It's ironic that our work should not
Make us free from these camps
But make us free from life
Apr 13, 2014
Apr 13, 2014 at 10:26 AM UTC
Big brother; surveilled; rat runs of pounds;
Instaweb orbs, tendrils confound,
Face timely chats across coded binary,
Clocked on, logged in let it begin;
Around and around the wheels about town,
The daily homage to tubes underground,
Whistlestop lunches, lanyards and passes,
Payslip available labour force saleable.
PIN, Password, Face recognition,
Upload, drawn down, robotic volition,
Subdural naked forced aspirations,
Chasing dragons of faked motivation.
Push and chug and push and chug,
The relentless surge of more from above,
Steady inbound for disembarkation,
Life's sourjourn of self realisation.
Mar 10, 2020
Mar 10, 2020 at 7:49 PM UTC
*higher crimes and misdemeanors,
the accusations are long and detailed
just like the poems I write
the sentencing, sneeringly sententious and luridly sensational,
your vocabulary confiscated
and imposed upon you a concision (ouch)
write only poetic-succinctly
when I cried out from the dock,
“innocent!
the words own me, not I them,”
the words, my jurors, snickered,
the fix was in,
and the sentence of hard labor,
a bad rap time indeterminate,
spent in a cruel and unusual
panopticon,
a punishment to fit the crime
no, won’t tell you what it means,
a private verbalist’s hell
Jul 4, 2019
Jul 4, 2019 at 7:03 AM UTC
MOTECUHZOMA
The locusts swarm in ever tighter arcs,
And dizzy whisperings pollute the air.
The time was, in my long-lost halcyon days,
I hubbed the compass of this spiraled realm
Like to the turbine of a tempest’s eye,
The axis of a great panopticon,
Whose every vassal gaze was trained on me,
Arrested in a well-lit wheel of cribs.
The glaring of my ever-watchful eye
Flushed out all glint of scandal from my slaves.
I was the copy-text to check their conduct,
And all examples I would radiate
Reflected warmly from each ardent face.
But now this ring of watchers weighs on me.
Jul 22, 2017
Jul 22, 2017 at 12:45 PM UTC
Too many ghosts
Who’ve drank from the Grail,
Have commented on its peculiar shape:
A vital substance in a Klein bottle
Has nourished the metaphysical,
And gave it suppleness
Like skin, but without nerve-endings—
Like plastic
These mobisian volatilities have taken
All vertices outward, prisons of prisms
Are not special to the spirit inside
But the monstrosity appearing
Astride the Rio Grande:
Eyes and ears posted
All along the prism’s edge
Contain so many lives yet to be lost,
The arms of the ghost
Surround the outside
With rusted-over armor to keep the Fates
Locked away indefinitely
Beating, starving, and ******
All lives coming to the edge of the undead.
There, from across the impossible barrier,
One can see the astral projection
Of death-animate within—
What is a prison outside is, by definition,
A prison inside
Guarded by a lily-white panopticon
And its pale imitations
Kept warm and safe in the rebel’s undead embrace.
When the transformation happened
Is anyone’s guess, but by the love
Of a dispassionate hatred,
A distant, fever-dream voice
From a white house upon a hill,
A clarion made of echoes,
The prisoners latch to one another
And form the body of a great scavenger—
By the vulture’s keen eye for death,
It picks off those who cannot stand
On their own two feet,
Those poor, huddled masses,
In one hand holding the AR-15,
The other, a bushel of nooses.
The vulture screams!
Ride, ride you wraiths!
To the border, ride!
The invasion of pained flesh
Shall never break the adamant heads
Of the patriot’s ghost, hungering
For the blood of a place
Victimed by the very body
It sought to bury,
As the body labors,
Eats nothing but its pride,
Drinks nothing but the slop
From piss-and-vinegar soaked
Rags of American flags strewn,
Torn asunder, ringing them out
To, one day, make Molotov cocktails
So hot, their blaze could boil ectoplasm and
Finally rattle staid hearts
Thousands of miles from the suffering,
A distance turned artist, apathy and hatred
Become this new face of humankind.
Sep 29, 2019
Sep 29, 2019 at 12:33 PM UTC