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The Empire of Modern Passivity

by Jim Benz

There are words
We use for eyes, and to use them
Is to believe them.

Spectacle: a word
In the supernatural sense, the Holy
Nomenclature.

Of this was redeemed
A modern purpose
For meaning. It was not our meaning.

You still evade
What cannot be experienced
From your own experience:

A village, a story
Sung by poets
In the village square,

A hundred holy days
And squalid feasting,
Hours that never knew

A wage or time without
A sunset. You evade
Only what is now forgotten:

The violent waste
Of a thousand tongues
Torn from separate Godheads,

And a thousand altars
On the daily
Pantheon of living, speaking

Blood-filled words
Like a thousand arms for working,
Feet for walking

Through the dirt
Of untamed sense
And reprobation -

Anathema: word without profit.

03/03/2008

Author's Note: after Guy Debord. subject to extensive change

Posted on 03/04/2008
Copyright © 2026 Jim Benz

Member Comments on this Poem
Posted by Mary Frances Spencer on 03/04/08 at 07:44 AM

Food for thought here...apathy as religion, scary and true! Adding to my faves! MFS

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