The Accomplishment

What is domestication
But hardwiring
In the psyche —
Laying tracks in the mind
Upon which the body must run
Its entire course
From birth till death

Thou shalt not —

And what happens
In all cases but few
The body ignores tracks laid down
Through language
Dogma, practices
Fear of shame and reprisals

Like the animal it is —
It sniffs boundaries
Steps over — crosses over
Hiding, secretly
Returning with shame
Guilt
For transgressing
For being derailed
For harbouring forbidden desires
For following instincts —
Seeking to rewire its mind

And so society
Furnishes
Orgies, nude beaches, pornography —
Hardcore
For all tastes, preferences, predispositions —
Underground
Just below the surface

And therapies, support groups, drugs
To deal with guilt
And shame —

And prisons
To protect you
From threatening norms
To keep you within
The boundaries

Aren’t what we call taboos
Just digressions of the body
Forbidden food
Sex
Violence, drugs —

Aren’t these natural consequences
Of domestication
Cultural conditioning —
The inculcation of fear and prohibitions

Aren’t these digressions
Just the body revolting against
Foreign bodies in the mind —
Which are then
Seen as transgressions
And punished through
Any manner of violence
Against the body

But —
Are these enforcements not veils
That hide
Beneath the surface
The one movement
No enforcement
No prohibition can control —

The movement where the mind
Turns upon itself
Where the psyche rips apart
Tracks that were laid down
Strips itself bare
And devours itself —
Naked, empty, unafraid

Then it laughs
Mocks and strips
Rips apart all established orders
Doctrines and dogmas
And proclaims
Sovereignty

But society has always known
It has seen through all
Who claimed sovereignty —
Who spoke
Intoxicated, unfettered
Unafraid

And so — you —
Who finds himself at this juncture —
Welcome

You have succeeded
And most likely
You will find no one
In the world
To share this accomplishment with —

The accomplishment
Of stripping yourself bare
And finding nothing
Underneath

And seeing that you are still
Caught in the same world
Where digressions and violations
Are taboos — heretical

Where you must live
Upholding and promoting
The fiction in others —
Of their individualities
Conceits, and self-deceptions

Where you must partake
In mask-making
Facade-erecting
Delusion-enforcing

And in every interaction
Practice tongue-biting
So you don’t slip
And accidentally say something
That gets you
Demonised or pathologised
Medicated, imprisoned
Stoned or hanged —

Shunned away
From children —
Even your own

Prosecuted, tried
And found guilty
Of finding no one —
Of being no one —

In a society
Where the price of living
Is pretending
To be someone