Talkeetna performance poet Ellen Thea voices Schizophrenogenesis. The text of the poem follows the audio.
Ellen Thea-schizophrenogenesis-6-8-2014
SCHIZOPHRENOGENESIS
by Ellen Thea Berger
I
Women, men, children slashed
by wire hangers in back rooms,
denied the just reward
of sweet fruit of
breasts and hips and thighs.
We’ve kissed the beast,
made love and bargains with the beast,
blamed men who couldn’t tame the beast,
who also sacrificed
heartvoices
to darkmouth Molech beast,
devouring soul monster,
inferno built on plastic,
silver and copper discs,
green slips of barter burning
what’s important
to importance.
II
Nondisposable disposable
diapers for
small disposable bodies.
Mother cries,
waste meta more, more, more for this, more of this.
Progress.
Scream, scream, lost screams into screaming wind,
invisible insidious spittle blows everywhere,
the sun falls, the rain shines
even on injustice,
seedlings uprooted, some grow up, some down.
What is acceptable is unacceptable to evolution.
We tolerate intolerability, how long?
Roaches only will survive; toughest in triumph,
as we try to kill them, killing us,
strong as the weakest link in the highest
point of the highest evolved
food chain, so-called.
III
Rats bit the black plague because cats were killed.
Cats were burned, screaming as women flaming screamed, churchmen
watching martyrs not mentioned in Foxe’s book, gangbanged as
a simple pretrial prerequisite, not worthy of mention in court
documents, hung by a jury of no woman’s peers, though peered
and poked and cattleprodded.
In some villages, one woman alone was spared the blazing rod.
Her thoughts. Did she spoil the children she was left to have?
The system rolled on, but at such a hollow cost.
IV
Ozone holes,
poles shifting, polar ice screaming,
solar winds howling,
we march willingly into ovens,
believing the voiceboxes,
emanations from an unstable electromagnetic global village.
Give the children a cybercypherhug,
while ventriloquist voiceboxes scream
buying and selling orders.
V
isthepaperworkdoneisthepaperworkdoneisthepaperworkdonedidyoupaythemoneydidyoupaythemoneydidyoupaythefeedidtheubiquitioustheysayyoucan –
the drones drone on while the honey is sucked out of the hive.
Not to worry,
anyone, anyone can work with children, the elderly, psychiatric patients,
drug addicts, grieving children of living AIDS parents, anyone, as long as you pay, pay, pay and fill out the paperwork, fill out the paperwork,
fill out the paperwork.
You don’t need a soul. You don’t need a soul.
Just buy and sell and kill
more trees in the rainforest
for the paperwork.
Deplete the oxygen,
stifle breathing.
VI
Ragged words stick in my throat,
my esophagus has a reflux, a reflex instinct,
fight, flight. But where to run and how to fight
vapored eyes?
No, no, we march off into the wounds,
lyricynicism of Generation X,
we’re near the end of the alphabet.
Arrogance.
Even Captain Janeway is a devotee of patriarchal Federation,
locked in step, sharks with lockjaw.
The beast taken for granted. Do you really want to get used
to this life, on this planet, then galactically spread
these weedy dandelion seeds?
VII
Exchange feminine patriarchy for masculine patriarchy.
Do I condemn my son because he was born without a vagina?
Is he a higher arc, he? Is she?
Higher and higher forms of archery.
And yes, yes, yes, some men believe a mask you lay, shun,
unaware they perform castric surgery upon themselves
by amputating women and children.
And yes, yes, yes, breasts and hips and thighs
(though some still are unnaturally waisted)
but matriarchy is still cutting out cookies by rote.
VIII
My eyes hurt from crying dusty tears
in this desert with no oasis.
Battalions of higher archeryized mothers
in gingham chains of apron strings beseech,
demand martyrdom to the owning of the guilt of mothers
through the ages, Stepford mothers want Stepford children,
Stepford women and Stepford men march to the ovens
unceasingly, even the guards go willingly,
unaware they are guards, fish caught
in a net, gasping poisoned air,
step around,
step down,
step back,
step over,
just step, step, step away
from the lemming life.
IX
Sigh in eyed societal suicide.
I see youth in aged eyes, I see youth anesthetized, I see
sole survivors of a lifetime’s memories suffocated,
though still breathing.
The emperor is naked.
The crowd is naked,
the bypassers are naked,
the child is clothed in innocent naked truth.
Grab a canopener, enlarge the sardine’s box.
Women, men, children, childhood’s survivors of all ages,
speak up, call collect, live.
We’re all homeless living under a suffering bridge
with only a holey blanket warming us.
I will not be led, silent, lost, into vague black ink.
And neither you.
