Government Worms 

 

and now the state penetrates 
 deep into our nostrils 
it tickles our brains sending 
messages through our tonsils 
and we sneeze out no deadly 
things only tiny diseased 
bats, the year of the rat 
and fear - disgusting amounts
oh bless us and bless you 
for dreaming so symbolically 
for believing that Mr President had 
really gathered enough intelligence 
to implant in us Satans' nanotechnology 
and that that is the cause of this modern 
melancholy, well laugh at my horns 
if I am wrong but that is the product 
of capitalism - had not you sensed 
the essence of desperation, before all of this?

And as you may read, I am somewhere in between 
my best friend coughs next door and she tells me on the phone
she is finding it hard to breathe - and she is only twenty-three 
oh what will succeed after this glorious pause of so-called progress? 
Some great global shift? Well I expect more half-hearted democracy  
where our sour, forgotten histories remain left unspoken and unread
but my student cries, he sobs telling me that he is finding lockdown
really hard this time with his low working memory and ADHD on tear
tier two, three tears fall onto his mock exam for his upcoming GCSE
PCR PC paranoia-read online and please help me decipher what I learnt
about Western science becoming somekind of dominant religion
in the third year of my anthropology degree 

 I see on Instagram a story and ask is this really all of it? 
Really the end or start of some great global reset? Am I 
 infertile - with no future - forever swabbing for a test that may
eventually dictate how we dress, to where we travel and how 
to greet - elbow, hug or a fist in the street? Never again cheek
to cheek and who will I dance and sing with? I don't want to live 
like that! Oh come on, Dear, I say again to she who believes in conspiracy
do not think so symbolic - just stick this cotton bud up your nostril and it  
will not kill your joyful frolic upon your dark fairytale land where honestly
 trust me, there is no evil microscopic government worm that can alter
DNA nor cross any blood barrier of your brain but really, I do understand
why you might think this way as I feel it too - that there is a darkness to
human existance, real lives of murder and infinate pain and right next door
 and I feel it too that governments do have that plan to divide us all 
 to persuade us even further from real community and love, to paint
us as seperate from the natural world and instead onto a money-making 
 graphs and piles of papers that are so hard and masculine
yet masked as the mundane and I know that they plaster these sheets
just so they can steal a few more of of our daylight hours, a little more
wad and the chance to again retell that jurked-off myth that they are
not the problem but it is them that are this, them in that 'wrong' culture
over there them who, unlike us who care, never give a sod and are stupid 
 compared to us  who know more than any could with all our graphs
we of course are in fact good in our hearts so come on, dear
bless us, and do not let us drift further away from the real sad
truth nor hide aloof behind another blue phone screen which reads: 
Beware! Government worms breed upon these lateral flows
and will penetrate your free sovereign minds through your nose!
Can not you see that is just narrative of the larger scheme:
their fatal hope for survival, to keep us distracted with fighting,
numb or emotional, ultimately devoid of our ancient liberty?