Matthew Moseman - Box Cutter

Box Cutter

If there are future generations
and if they remember us
they will remember that we were born
into a divided world

but
if these words are all that remain
let them be a chronicle.

There are places
where everything is wrapped in plastic,
and in time
even our minds are stuffed with cellophane;
our thoughts become styrofoam peanuts.

Only a few remain
to cut through the packaging,
only a few, to see truth

divine sight makes outcasts
fringe existence takes a toll:
many flee shadow
to join Priest-King shepherds of sheepish humanity--

people barely above bovine,
self-awareness is all squandered
in mazes of mindless distraction--
monolithic fiberglass labyrinths
built to occupy idle minds’ time.

Teeming masses
waste away,
screens all day
while autistic lab rats
build the same toy a new way.

Bigger, smaller, lighter, faster--
new games to play
for boredom sets in ever swifter.

This is what they call progress!
A pendulum swinging slightly to the left,
then groaning slightly right.

This state of mind, this way of life;
you can call it free,
expand it in the name of liberty,
say that it’s the only way to be.

Indigo islets of awareness
are a clade apart
squeezed in cracks

we few have a responsibility
made innate by our unique memory
of the true meaning of free
to take up the machete,
to hack through barricades of partial humans
so far gone
they are human in theory
but plastic in practice.