LITTLE LEGIONS
We are stirring…
Our limbs are atrophied and we’re still a bit out of our minds
But our eyes are opening…
The curtain is falling
The stage is lit
The script is a tyrant of antiquity
Illuminated
As you waited in line at lunch time
For a plastic chicken melt
And suddenly realised
That’s exactly how you felt
Inside!
This play is starting to get fucking boring…
All the concentration is exhausting,
We are becoming skin
Itching with the silent maddening shedding
Of apron and puppet strings.
We’re growing,
Ripped from the nipple of the nanny,
We’re beginning to realise we’re attached to a body
Not a fashion mannequin with holes.
We know there’s poison in our favourite things;
Our grandmothers didn’t.
Our grandfathers wouldn’t question
Why our boys are always the heroes
Or wonder that if all soldiers aren’t murderers
Then none are.
In the car, the bars, the shopping centres
Our chests are feeling the tightening of our belts;
We’re taking claustro-agora-phobic-panic attacks in public
And we think it’s us that’s sick,
As if the essence of ourselves
Would want to exist in this Twilight Zone of Neon forever.
(The natural order is to go slow;
Steady
Like the flow of red and white headlights
As the herd moves to concrete cattle pens in the night.
Keep left! Turn right!
In approximately 5.7 miles/
Will ticket number 439
Please go to desk –
English or American accents!
English or American accents!
You must be this height to enjoy this ride!
Please do not talk to distract the driver!)
Our elders are tired of feeling embarrassed.
We never ever stand forward of this notice.
This play is starting to get fucking boring!
And one by one
The audience is leaving,
Or just United Concerned Citizens sitting
Waiting for the end of the season,
To re-invent (again and again) themselves
Like cell division,
Like the omnipresent chains of chaos without purpose
Plus spermatus equals us:
In one
Miraculous moment a foetus forms,
A martyr of the darkness or the light is born,
There IS a plan.
The changing of the guards can’t stop it,
The paper in your wallet
Nor the terrified omnipotent men who print it
Can’t stop it.
All over the planet
Tiny pockets of the people
In 3’s, 7’s, 12’s
And all the multiples in 6
degree separations,
Multiplied the 7 generations it takes to heal trauma
Are suspicious of feeling enslaved,
Are getting sick of feeling sick
And being sick
And doing sick and depraved
And in desperation (for the hour is late)
They are plugging in, logging on, highlighting the commands of
The antique script on the screen
And, in little legions, are pressing delete.
© Abby Oliveira, ‘09
