The Children Of The Successful Velveeta Eaters

“Shall I grapple with my destroyers

In the muscular poses of the museums?

But my destroyers avoid the museums .”  

Wallace Stevens

The children of the successful Velveeta eaters

listen intently and properly to Beethoven,  Haydn,

Liszt, in their suits and dresses, grey and desiccated

in the academic venue from which they still suck 
life…. the zombie factotum class spawned from the 
Velveeta lotus eaters of postwar success and yawning 
hope for the future.

These are Anonymous…anonymous in spirit unto

themselves…cultural cultists programmed to see

smell, feel and think within the lines, high on the

opiate of alleged security…rows upon rows of them

in theatres, malls, offices, schools, churches,

basketball games… fitted like bed linens to the vast

social landscape….docile, obedient, convenient…

expendable…..lost in their own lives…imprisoned

in convention.

The successful Velveeta eaters were good people.

They just didn’t realize the kind of cheese

they were being handed until it was too late;

it snuck up on them one slice, one aerosol can

at a time…and their children became processed

like the cheese itself; manufactured, packaged,

blended.

This is where we are: in or affected by

a cheesy landscape of manufactured consent…

mutual twisted agreement, if you like…

the only heroic action being to get out for

the sake of oneself and the others....."get
out" meaning freeing the mind from conventional
social perceptions.