We live in 1984 and 451 with eyes in our technology
and mouths pressed against our ears telling us what to believe.
How and what we need to fear.

Thoughtpolice rip through textbooks like Montag,
setting aflame ideas that are too immoral, too controversial,
hiding history, concealing mistakes.
Trapping us in a fictitious world by
inserting the same stories into every head.

Clarisse asked questions and so should we.
How can we change what is ignored?
How can we regret the past when the past is rewritten?

Blackwhite
War is peace

We should learn about
the Chicano Movement and Caesar Chavez,
who peacefully demanded equality as his stomach growled
and ached to give opportunities to people like Luis Rodriguez.
Luis, a man always running,
hunted like an animal for his skin,
brutalized and afraid.
But who could he ask for help when the
sentinels of the city of angels are the enemy?
Like the fireman burning books.

Doublethink
Freedom is Slavery

Elisabeth Mann looked up to a sky of dense, somber smoke colouring the air black,
floating unharmed through the spiked thorns of the barbed wire
curling around the concentration camp.
She stood half naked, head shaved,
listening the laughter of a Nazi soldier,
Big Brother, who had promised her a reunion with her parents.
Instead he pointed toward the murky liberation
and said smirking
“There! There are your parents!
The only way out of Auztwhich
is through the smoke stacks!”


Oceania
Ignorance is Strength.

What about Ayat al-Akhras and Rachel Levy?
One murderer, one casualty or both victims?
Did not both mothers cry and say
This is not the way,
This is not the way.
When ideas are the cause of war,
and resolution is hard because
violence begets violence begets violence
begets Ayat strapping a bomb to herself
in Palestine to send a message
through television to show all,
she knows nothing
other than violence and fear.

07/05/2009

Author's Note: Pretty self explanatory, I think.

Posted on 07/05/2009
Copyright © 2025 Kim Bennett