Where The Wild Things Are
By Kevin Tucker


Long thought to have been killed off:
                       
            a thing,…
 
                                               a place,…
                       
                                    the dirty thought,
                       
                         the impure life,
                       
the long time enemy of Order remains captive,
           
still breathing air just under the calloused skin.
 
                        (read: civilized, overworked, desensitized, lifeless) 

            It was fought off with;
 
plows in the Fertile Crescent,

                       
                                    with power in Rome,
                       
            with monotheism to the ‘savages’
                       
                        with plows across the world,
                       
            with swords in Eurasia,
                       
                        with guns in the New World. 

            The long, drawn out battle is carried on with;
                       
            work in our daily lives,
                       
schooling (read: training) in our childhoods,
                       
            television in our leisure time,
                       
money on our minds,
                       
            legacy, Futures: mass produced aspirations. 

            We have the TechNOlogiKILL, scientific, Reasoned clump
                      
of circuitry to be our guiding light, our master, OUR GOD.
           
We are slaves to the new (read: 10,000 years)
                       
world order (same as the old). 

 (civilized, domesticated, obedient, servant: slave) 

                        Our cages are made of concrete, steel, plexi-glass:
           
the functioning, human made hell:

complete with natural scenery.

                       
(read: shadows, ghosts: skeletons in the closet)
 
                       
All the Paxil, Prozac, happy pills, happy sitcoms,
           
    happy ads, faces, cars, clothes, abs can’t conceal
                       
            our lust, our urges: OUR BEING.           

            The school shootings, the mass murderers, the serial killers, the bioengineers, the secret
societies, the honor rolls, the degrees, the prisons, the shattered lives:
                       
all of this, EVERY BIT OF IT
                       
            is filling the void, OUR void. 

            The rejection of wildness
                       
(read: neither place nor thing, but being)
           
  is the rejection of self, the creation of a void. 

            The sickening despair (read: result)
                       
will only deepen,
                       
            unless we become whole again.