Caitlin Johnstone – “Manufacturing Culture” (2021)
In Hollywood the Pentagon rewrites scripts about the military
to manufacture consent for a globe-spanning empire
to make US soldiers look like good guys
to make US wars look like good wars
to ensure continued recruitments
to ensure a steady supply of young bodies
to feed into the engine of a giant mechanical dragon
that is fueled by human blood.
They pipe our heads full of John Bolton brainworms
and Lockheed Martin dreams.
Our minds are colonized by shock and awe invasions
through a neighborhood in Los Angeles with no soul,
no art, no heart, no life, no love,
just cackling plastic smiles overmasking bestial snarls
and screenwriters with cocaine habits and nothing to say.
An invasive culture that is devoid of culture spreads across the globe
like the metastatic tendrils of a malignant tumor
saying “Isn’t global capitalism working out great?”
and “This is all perfectly normal and sane actually!”
and “Hey maybe billionaires are crimefighting superheroes?”
and “This is definitely the nation that should be leading the world!”
Depicting an America with no homelessness or obesity,
whose streets are clean and whose people are not hanging on
by the skin of their teeth in squalor, poverty and dilapidation.
“Politics is downstream from culture” they say
as they manufacture culture in Hollywood, Arlington and Langley.
Conveyor belt culture.
Plastic culture.
Franchise culture.
Vulture culture.
They funnel death into our minds
so on election day we will vote for death
and we will buy death from our stores
and pump death into our atmosphere
from fuel pumps made possible by orgies of death in the Middle East.
The news man teaches us how to think and Hollywood teaches us how to feel.
They pour death and plastic over our hearts like concrete
to make us more like them,
to make us dim and unimaginitive,
to make us sharp-toothed and stitch-eyed,
to drown out the song of our planet,
the song which grows the trees,
the song which replicates the cells,
the song which swims the fish,
the song which chirps the sparrows,
the song which stirs the fetus in the womb,
the song which moves the energy up the spine,
the song which opens up the eyes.
They pour death and plastic over our hearts like concrete
to sedate our terrestrial intuition,
to silence our song,
to divert our sacred sexuality,
to stifle the thunderclap aliveness of our being,
to keep the holy hominid from opening its eyes,
eyes which do not recognize the authority of the mind mages,
eyes which do not recognize the validity of mind cages.
They pour death and plastic over our hearts like concrete.
But the movement of tree roots can make cracks appear,
and from within those cracks
sprouts emerge.
Caitlin Johnstone
Caitlin Johnstone – “New Year’s Resolutions”
Be less patient with people who deliberately waste my time.
Try to keep up with the washing.
Find out what Chapo Trap House is.
Seize control of the narrative.
Be mean to jerks.
Forgive myself for not keeping up with the washing.
Be unsympathetic to people’s desires which harm other people.
Learn how to pronounce Mnuchin.
Drop all my weird body issues.
Draw more.
Make more time for sitting quietly and waiting for poems to bubble up.
Be nicer to the cat even though she’s a fucking asshole.
Get the husband to do the washing.
Destroy the deep state.
Go outside more.
Build a bunch of doll houses and pretend they’re for my eventual grandkids.
Preemptively sabotage Nikki Haley’s presidential run.
Drink less coffee.
Fuck that. Drink more coffee.
Take more baths.
Climb more trees.
Eat more fruit.
Paint my nails more.
Meet my children’s gaze more.
Ask my parents more about how things used to be.
Hold more grudges.
Get into more fights.
Take up more space.
Shine unapologetically bright.
Make more decisions which are preceded by the phrase “Fuck it.”
Choose life in each instant.
Walk with more swag.
Integrate more costume items into my everyday wardrobe.
Remember to brush my hair before it starts looking like Chewbacca’s shower drain.
Love more fiercely.
More car singing and supermarket dancing.
Enrage more misogynists.
Enjoy my body more.
Throw out the parasites and enforce my sovereign boundaries.
Don’t let anyone tell me about me.
Get quiet and tune in to my intuition more often.
Return the will of the planet to its people.
Make the bastards pay.
Caitlin Johnstone
Caitlin Johnstone – “Dumbstruck”
In the morning
a man made of black crickets stands waiting at your doorstep
while round color patterns spin through your vision.
Ancient alligators emerge from the neighboring houses
to stretch and grab the newspaper
and sing to distant star systems about evolution.
Let the world astonish you today, holy hominid.
The opposite of life is not death.
The opposite of life is habit.
Let the cricket alchemists carry you
through each color noise feast you meet today.
Trust in their sorcery
and watch morning dew coalesce upon each new moment
and let the patterns spiral away
as you meet us all dumbstruck
for the very first time.
Caitlin Johnstone
Caitlin Johnstone – “Things That Grow”
Walk with me into the Garden wearing living clothes,
away from the dead ideas of smarmy brainiacs,
the dead towers built of Earth’s last bones,
the dead machines manufacturing bullets and poison,
the dead streets paved with dead dreamguides,
and the dead voices of the death gods on television.
Walk with me into the Garden wearing living clothes,
away from moaning clerics and the books of dead men,
the mud farms and stump orchards and gargoyle gardens,
the Cyber Valley where they digitize dead minds,
the think tanks where they make our eyes turn gray,
and come play in the Garden full of things that grow.
Walk with me into the Garden wearing living clothes,
and I’ll show you how deeply cherished you are,
how the wind rejoices at the touch of your flesh,
how your mind floats in a sea of undiscovered leviathans,
how plants have voices and trees are buddhas,
your infinite significance and eternal irrelevance.
Walk with me into the Garden wearing living clothes,
and get pregnant with me full of things that grow,
with baby rainforests and schools of whales,
with dragon poets forbidden from history,
with the pulsing of the Earth and the pulsing of our hearts
as we merge our cells with the Unborn.
Come with me into the Garden wearing living clothes,
and let us kneel at the feet of the things that grow.
Caitlin Johnstone
Caitlin Johnstone – “Eden”
We hand each new baby a briefcase and a gun
and say,
“This is how it is. Deal with it.”
We tell them the lies our parents taught us,
then send them off to war in the City
where they get old and get mortgages
until they decay on their deathbeds
surrounded by acquaintances
who tell stories like,
“He built a tall tower on the east end of the City,”
or
“She wrote about clothes for a magazine.”
When what we should do
(and I will scream this until my final breath)
is ask the baby,
“Well, what do you reckon is going on?
What’s it like in there, baby,
before you’ve been filled with lies,
before you’ve been adopted by bosses and a pill-popping spouse,
before we’ve painted you with oil and sold you to Amazon?
How do you look at the world with such wonder?
How do you delight in my face
when you have seen it so many times before?
How can we play again
like you play, baby?
How can we get back
to the place when the world was enthralling
and all we knew was love
before we got captured by gargoyles in the City?
Before we found ourselves clinging to screens like a life raft,
before our vision turned into gray pixels?”
What does the baby see from its cradle?
What does the space between our thoughts think about all this?
Show me your eyes as they were when they first opened
and I will walk with you back to Eden.
Caitlin Johnstone
The Beat Patrol 