On The Establishment, Care, And Maintenance

Of Personal Social Parameters

A Poetic Series

by

James Douglas Fanning

Liturgy for Social Media

Breathe.
Ignore ignorance.
Do not become depressed
by the lack of societal empathy
reflected here.
Breathe.

Breathe.
Do not be sucked into the morass of false news.
Forgive stupidity, and do not respond to it.
Avoid the slimy vortex of hate posts.
This is a product of conditioning,
and is used by governments/corporations to mould
the audience that they would enslave.
Breathe.

Breathe.
Do not be drawn into policy statements:
your opinion will never change the ethos of a closed mind.
Do not invest anything of yourself.
Breathe.

Elevation

(Further to the series:  On the Establishment, Care, and Maintenance of Personal Social Parameters)


The struggle,
and the weight
of trying:
reaching for a point
of departure.

Dropping the repetition,
putting away the routine,
the boredom,
the sameness,
of constant distraction.

Letting go of the spiels
of strident people
beleaguering their very own
hobby horses,
until the beast falls.

Unchaining from the distraction
of the reality of others:
setting aside the blackness
to which our masters
condition us.

Then rising, with song,
and a sense of joy
into the cool, crisp air of logic;
into the sunshine
that dwells within.

(Anti)Social Media

(Further to the series:  On the Establishment, Care, and Maintenance of Personal Social Parameters)

This is my wall.
I hide behind it, peeking
timorously, eyes lowered:
hiding, not seeking.

This is my community.
My mask talks to your mask, 
reflecting nothing of self:
real exchange a traumatic task.

I have no idea who you are
if you should malign me,
but I don’t care: it is simply
my persona that you see.

We say, and we do,
and pretend that all is real;
but no emotions trickle through:
online just doesn’t feel.

I can blather on for hours,
and you may prattle too;
but exchange nothing of substance:
this is what we do.

Our faux avatars reflect
naught of whom we might be:
lost, lonely individuals;
anonymous, but free.

Graven in Stone

We are buried deep beneath
old tablets, made of stone.
These rules, made in another age,
command sinners to atone.

They teach us how to bear the weight
of suffering, pain, and woe,
by abandoning sense and logic,
for something we cannot know.

A stitch in time saves nine, they say,
and other folksy stuff:
and the tough get going
when the going gets tough.

It totals up to nothing
but a yoke to restrain your soul,
and make you more compliant
to those who would control.

There should only be one tablet,
(and it won’t come from above!)
and graven on it are the words
“Inclusion, Peace, and Love.”

Rehearsing the Script

Each of us maintains a book,
with ragged, dog-eared cover,
and read it faithfully every day
with no surprises to discover.

In each of our relationships
the script makes dialogue clear:
no unexpected exposés
to cause us dread, or fear.

Sometimes we have to extemporize,
when a page is smudged or stained,
and we stumble with words and narrative,
until the storyline is regained.

And sad the day when we go out
and leave our script behind,
leaving us to prattle foolishly
forgetting each and every line.

Each of us maintains a book,
with ragged, dog-eared cover,
and read it faithfully every day
with no surprises to discover.

Into The Woods

(Part of the series: On the Establishment, Care, and Maintenance of Personal Social Parameters)

I am running off into the woods:
I can’t take it any more.
Far too much stupidity
from far too many boors.

Off into the quiet woods,
with no talk of various gods,
no ideological dogma
spewed from plastic-minded frauds.

No fences in this forest deep,
not a uniform in sight:
not a storm cloud in cerulean sky:
quiet peace, with dappled light.

Willful stupidity offends me,
and it now seems epidemic:
love and logic have been erased,
and hate has become systemic.

I know I should stand and scream,
and man the battle lines;
but I have grown too old, too fast,
to hope for better times.

So I’ll hide in my intellectual woods,
and heal in shadowed tranquillity;
and wait, dreaming of a world
devoid of hate, tribes, and hostility.

One Size Fits All

(Part of the series "On the Establishment, Care, and Maintenance of Personal Social Parameters")

Don’t squeeze me into templates,
or assume that I’m like you:
you’d actually have to be me
to know what I call “true”.

Don’t quote me words
from your myriad gods,
sold wholesale with ten percent markup
by televangelist frauds.

Don’t tell me your country is the best
while flapping your flag at me,
and kindly cease this meme about
land of the brave and home of the free.

Stop for a while your vapid speech
about conditioned point of view,
and seek out wisdom in others:
learn truth you never knew!

Don’t cram me in your little box,
full of dogma too demanding;
come join the march for global peace,
inclusion, and understanding.

Fences

(Part of the series:  On The Establishment, Care, and Maintenance of Personal Social Parameters)

We each construct our fences 
to give order to our lives.
They protect our paranoia from the different, 
and the strange,
So we fence off this idea, 
that concept, or belief, 
then mount a set of guidelines, 
protecting it from change.

Our neighbours have their fences, 
their moats, 
and their walls,
guarding ideological boundaries, 
and isolating all.
We wave our patriotic flags, flying on each fencepost,
with rousing martial music 
giving frisson to our pride.
Our hegemonic leaders give proof
to Gramsci’s thought;
empowering us to build more walls,
and do exactly as we are taught.
Inside our tiny separate worlds,
behind the barricades,
we celebrate our freedoms,
with rockets, and with parades.

One fine day we may awake
and find our world has changed,
with our fences turned to cattle pens
as our leaders had arranged.
Can we not tear down these fences,
these abhorrent tribal walls?
Let us hasten to embrace the light
before the darkness falls.

Girded With Anger

(Part of the Series:  On The Establishment, Care, and Maintenance of Personal Social Parameters)

Just who do you think you are,
to speak to me like that?
How dare you think that I care
about anything you have to say!
You think you know me?
You believe you “understand” me?
The inhabitants of my reality
have no reference point
in your experience;
they are strange and frightening
(for the most part)
with verbal barbs
to infect and destroy
fragile flesh and feelings.

Leave me alone!
I am trying to protect you from me,
but you keep returning,
pretending that you have a sense
of me, and what I really think.
Acting kind and understanding
will not spare you, should you
dilute my anger, 
and deflect my searing gaze.

Leave me alone!
I have problems with which I must cope:
a moment of quiet, please,
so I may seek resolution.
My anger is my regard for you,
and the desire not to flail out verbally,
hurting you, and scarring the core
of who you can be.
I gird myself in anger
that you may walk in peace.

Rehearsing the Script

(Part of the Series:  On The Establishment, Care, and Maintenance of Personal Social Parameters)



Each of us maintains a book,
with ragged, dog-eared cover,
and read it faithfully every day
with no surprises to discover.

In each of our relationships
the script makes dialogue clear:
no unexpected exposés
to cause us dread, or fear.

Sometimes we have to extemporize,
when a page is smudged or stained,
and we stumble with words and narrative,
until the storyline is regained.

And sad the day when we go out
and leave our script behind,
leaving us to prattle foolishly
forgetting each and every line.

Each of us maintains a book,
with ragged, dog-eared cover,
and read it faithfully every day 
with no surprises to discover.

Trick Questions and Tribal Tattoos

(Part of the Series:  On The Establishment, Care, and Maintenance of Personal Social Parameters)

Vestigial memories:  huddled in a cave,
hungry, frightened,
destined to die
in two or three decades,
if not painfully and suddenly
as prey.

We live longer now
but still seek the tribal cluster,
for security,
but mostly to assuage
the overwhelming and debilitating
sense of being alone,
and insignificant, against the void.

We develop secret handshakes,
certain ways of dressing,
arcane reference buzzwords,
and mark our bodies
so those we seek to emulate
may recognise us as one of
“them”.

When shall we evolve far enough
to recognise that,
in order for our species
to survive cosmic extinction,
we must stop tribal wagon-circling,
and accept that we are one?
We are one species,
wrought from elements
of dying stars.
Our destiny is one:
we are born,
we live,
we die.
Beyond that no evidence exists for furtherance.

It behoves us, then,
during our breath-taking ride
on the arrow of time,
to strive for peace,
for inclusion for all,
for kindness,
for understanding,
for acceptance,
and for love.
All else is folly:
just a crude tribal tattoo
to mark the passage
of a brutish species
who refused evolution,
and tribalized themselves
to extinction.

The Strange Case of the Fallen Guard

This poem is part of the series:
On The Establishment, Care, and Maintenance of Personal Social Parameters

The Strange Case of the Fallen Guard

This is the way of things:
I recognise you, and
react towards you,
and interact with you,
in this manner.

Through a series
of mind tricks, I am aware,
but do not react 
to the person you present me.
Seeing you for what you are
forces me to hide.
The mind structure is tower-like,
but not a Disney castle,
more like Bran Castle 
on a dark and stormy
All Souls’ Night.

I have arranged complex schedules
for the guards:  
never look within the rooms
never open the doors
be deaf and heedless
to strange whisperings,
and,
stay alert.

We may speculate on why the guard slept:
too tired for too long?
spite and the hatred of a boring job?
Or had he perhaps always known
he would sleep.
Speculation does not change the fact:
when the guard was fallen
the truth of our relationship escaped,
and things were never the same.