POSSESSION
Lo and behold
The monstrous chimeras
And assorted devilish creatures
That linger
In the plutocratic Hades
of possession
Theaters of possession
Battleground for the control
Of object and subject
In a world of information feudalism
Those who do not surrender
To the spell of enchanted things
Are excluded barbaric foreigners
In the process of normalizing
Marketing weaves a web
of enchantment
Transforms vague responses
Into an impulse of possession
Orchestrated strategies
Drive the longing
For possession
Desires are the instruments
of social control
Propaganda of possession by flows
And the spirit of commodities,
A ritual of mediated influence
In the modes and habits of life,
of work and play
Transcendence
becomes immanence:
When the ball moves,
The whole game moves with it
People passing a police checkpoint
Or other portal of authority,
The Magic of the State
Identifies this brief tenseness
As the moment of influx
At the entrance,
As becoming possessed
By the spirit of the state
Slow studied casualness
and unconcern
Resembling the zombie faces
of the entranced
Are not these barriers
The shrines and magic gateways
Of the state itself?
One imprudent step could bury us forever
Conscious self-determination
Overridden by another will,
The possessed, act against their will
Destroying parts of the brain
That govern will power and speech
Zombies are reduced to slaves,
The living dead
Modern consumer democracies
A grand theater for the zombie:
Nearly dead but still lively enough
For mindless work and consumption
Zombies are an enigma for the living:
What is the difference
Between the living and the dead?
When does the life of mortals
Become so mean a thing
As to be virtually unlife?
Every real effigy has a shadow which is its double