Caitlin Johnstone

Desperate Monsters

We were comfortable in our complacency. We were satisfied with our Netflix and our Taco Bell. We were not happy, but we were satisfied. We did not want to have to awaken the strange DMT gods that live in our foreheads, or the screw snakes sleeping at the base of our spine, or the mushroom…

Caitlin Johnstone
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We were comfortable in our complacency.
We were satisfied with our Netflix and our Taco Bell.
We were not happy, but we were satisfied.

We did not want to have to awaken
the strange DMT gods that live in our foreheads,
or the screw snakes sleeping at the base of our spine,
or the mushroom giants who dwell behind our visual fields,
or the great golden frog at the center of the earth.

We did not wish to have to summon
the caterpillar planets from the depths of space,
or the elephant squid from our secret abysses,
or the mammoth moths from the tabernacle in our throat,
or the Yellow Priestess from Her dinosaur throne.

But desperate times,
you see,
desperate times call for desperate monsters.

So now we’ve got to get up,
dust the cheese puff powder from off our sweatpants,
grumble our way over to the police tape-covered door
and, after clearing the theremin and the surfboard
and the sewing machine out of the way
(none of which we use anymore but we keep meaning to),
unleash eldritch angels and eyeball blimps
to burn this motherfucker to the ground.

We’d have been content with decent paychecks
and a viable planet,
and maybe some healthcare for the Yanks,
but you bastards got greedy
and now your mouths are full of weirdling worms,
and I bet you all feel quite silly now.

You did not realize that we have tentacles in our bellies
and wands that shoot eel ogres,
and benthic beasts swimming in our souls.

You did not realize that we are more powerful than your wildest imaginings,
and that you have never truly understood what we’re made of.

Desperate times call for desperate monsters,
old chap.
There is a feathered claw behind you.

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26 responses to “Desperate Monsters”

  1. tjrich Avatar
    tjrich

    If they do decide to fight to the death so be it. I doubt the world will mourn their passing. When henchmen see the writing on the wall. Henchmen tend to look for ways to save their own skins not those of gangster bosses. 🙂

  2. Mato Avatar
    Mato

    I just wrote in my latest post:

    The many psychopaths among us have to be healed or at least isolated, quarantined, cordoned off, confined, neutralized in a humane way. It is unlikely that Jeff Bezos, Warren Buffet, Elon Musk, Donald Trump, and most of their fellow billionaires will change and accept the new rules of a cooperative, harmonious, caring society. They will fight any change and many will fight to the death.

    How could such a conflict be solved peacefully?

    The powerful psychopaths and sociopaths rely on help and services like everybody else. If their aids, servants, bodyguards join the new society, they can shout, have a tantrum, a fit, an outburst, it will not help, nobody will obey.

    1. tjrich Avatar
      tjrich

      If they do decide to fight to the death so be it. I doubt the world will mourn their passing. When henchmen see the writing on the wall. Henchmen tend to look for ways to save their own skins not those of gangster bosses. 🙂

  3. minecritter Avatar
    minecritter

    I’m not lazy. I’m doing my patriotic duty to stay on my couch until I drown in crumbs. Like the ad says, I’m a “couch potat-triot.”
    See:

  4. Roundball Shaman Avatar
    Roundball Shaman

    Ah, the sweet bliss of sleeping one’s life away
    Mindlessly staring at a soul-emptying little box in your hands
    Letting those who want to do you in
    Put all their devilish thoughts deep into your brain

    Neil Sedaka sings “Breaking Up Is Hard to Do”
    He could just as easily be singing “Waking Up Is Hard to Do”

    Yes indeed
    Desperate times do call for desperate monsters
    When will we stop embracing our outer monsters
    When will we stop embracing our devilish monsters within
    When will we stop fearing the Light
    And embracing darkness
    But in darkness we can hide
    So we think
    From ourselves
    From our destiny to live
    From our destiny to thrive
    From our destiny to create
    From our proper place in the Light
    We can hide in darkness
    So we think
    And gaze at the light from the
    Little devilish box in our hands
    While extinguishing
    Our burning sun that lies dormant within us

    Comma, comma, down dooby doo down down
    Comma, comma, down dooby doo down down
    Waking up is hard to do

  5. Infinite Onion Avatar
    Infinite Onion

    In 1692 in Colonial America, Giles Corey was accused of witchcraft and pressed to death with four-hundred pounds of stones on his chest. It took him two days to suffocate. His last words? “More weight.”

    For those relatively privileged, it’s pretty crazy how growing up as kids we harbor all these thoughts and ideas about what the world is like. Grownups are good people! The world runs on love! Doctors know exactly what they’re doing and the legal system is fair! Then you grow up and find out that you were wrong about basically everything you thought about the world. Not only are you wrong, but in every single instance of you being wrong the reality is worse than what you thought. We stopped checking for monsters under our beds when we realized they were inside us.

    If the things I’m doing are considered a crime then let history be a witness that I am a criminal. Hostility toward the American government and the capitalist system is a religious duty and we hope to be rewarded by our God.

    Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also prison.

    I decided a while ago that I can live with whatever they do to me. The only thing I can’t live with is knowing I did nothing.

    Something happens, where you realize that this other, that how other people regard you does not have enough calories in it, to keep you from blowing your brains out—that you’ve got to find, make some other détente.

    “The Assassin had killed evil before. People were happy,
    thrilled that another monster had met his end. On that clear,
    crisp morning in the normally serene Central Park, his trigger
    pull would be remembered for a while. And he would get on a
    plane or train or bus or, like today, use his own two feet, and pull
    another trigger, or throw another knife, or strangle the life out of
    someone using simply his bare hands. He would continue to do
    it, and for only one reason. If he didn’t, the world had no chance
    to get better. If good people stood by and did nothing, the
    monsters won every time. He was not going to let that happen”

    Assassins, you see, do not fear they are going to jail—they fear they are going to fail. And these ideas must die. Ideas are more difficult to kill than people, but they can be killed, in the end.

    Personally I try to avoid killing anything at all anymore because I don’t like how quickly the blood rage rises and takes over. The people doing the things that got your brain fucked up are desperate and broken and have let the beast run wild because they don’t know what else to do. Being a monster is a powerful thing, and some of us need that to survive. Doesn’t mean we don’t need to put them down, doesn’t mean we do, just means it’s understandable and you don’t have to get messed up over it.

    Those same humans have the capacity for great compassion and empathy, just like the people you love, but they don’t use it. There are reasons we do what we do and sometimes it’s easier to do good and sometimes easier to be fucked up. I don’t hold it against people much anymore when they fuck up, I just try to prevent it from hurting anyone else if I can.

    One of life’s greatest questions is how those with a strong moral code can deal with monsters without becoming monsters themselves.

    https://pastebin.com/qV2qT0GU

    http://www.mediafire.com/file/k1omyaf0r73shvk/Twenty-Twenty-four.pdf/file

    1. Tjrich Avatar
      Tjrich

      In 1692 in Colonial America, Giles Corey was accused of witchcraft and pressed to death with four-hundred pounds of stones on his chest.

      It never ceases to amaze me how the deeply devoted religious can find such Satanic ways to murder other people.

  6. Vee Avatar
    Vee

    Most of us have been infected with fear, and then there are the lucky few of us who are immune.

    Desperate Monsters want -and NEED to keep injecting us with fear.

    The fearful are the easiest to control.

    V

    1. Marten Avatar
      Marten

      Got it right, Buddy

  7. Rick Hartley Avatar
    Rick Hartley

    Love it! Thanks for the reminder!

  8. Litore Lapis. Avatar
    Litore Lapis.

    Once we don’t end up in 1951 with Gort showing up. We should be just fine. Just hoping actually. I cant remember the special phrase for the life of me.

    1. ron campbell Avatar
      ron campbell

      klatu barada nickto

  9. JM Avatar
    JM

    Am I the only one who didn’t know what a theremin is? Apparently, it is old technology. Fantastic! Thank you for keeping us in a constant state of curiosity and learning, Caitlin! Your poetry is nearly always deep and complex. I love it.

  10. John Day Avatar
    John Day

    I feel differently, more open to the good energies in the universe when I work out in the garden. We’ve been getting the workshop ready to do some real work, and poured the slab 2 days ago. It is curing. Here is the blog, with confirmation of how critical vitamin-D from sunlight outdoors, and those little 5000 unit pills (take 2/day for 2 months, then 2/day) is. Also, a picture of me holding first 3 Black Krim tomatoes and standing in the prepped slab forms with the rebar. http://www.johndayblog.com/2020/05/cheap-and-harmless.html

  11. Victor G. Avatar
    Victor G.

    Thank you, C.J.!
    I’m listening to inspirational music these days … Permit me a few examples; Just about anything by the Clash (“Clampdown”), “Resistance” and “After the Revolution” by David Rovics, “Academy Fight Song” by Mission of Burma, “All you Fascists Gonna Die” by Woodie Guthrie, “Roll Over Beethoven” (Chuck Berry or the Beatles, your pick), “Joe Hill” by Phil Ochs … the list goes one and on.
    I wonder if these musicians were “awake”? There are certainly more than five of them. Oh yeah, “People Have the Power” by Patti Smith. Cheers!!!

  12. Mixie Avatar
    Mixie

    Poignant. Just what I needed to read. The Covid 19 Health Response Bill was rushed through by our Labour Government in New Zealand today. Our human rights have been stripped and the police have been given unholy power over the people. Our country entered dangerous territory today. It is time to resist, rise up, revolt.

  13. Petra Avatar
    Petra

    BRILLIANT, absolutely perfect, empowering, bless you, thank you, LET’S DO THIS THING TOGETHER !

    And when the dust finally settles, true journalists/artists/poets such as you will be on the major networks of a mainstream media that will belong, as it should, to US, the people.

  14. Doug Avatar
    Doug

    Fucking beautiful

  15. Doug Avatar
    Doug

    Fucking beautiful

    Thank you

  16. Roy Avatar
    Roy

    Isn’t that what they call magical thinking? So, what is that 5 awake people out of almost eight billion? I wish it were so, but it’s not, all these humans are just as brain dead as Biden.

    1. HelenB Avatar
      HelenB

      Just about everyone I know is awake.
      Choose your friends carefully …
      We’re going to need them.

  17. ron campbell Avatar
    ron campbell

    I call them ” the owners and the masters “; the rich and powerful people that are hellbent on owning my life and mastering my life. Bill Gates and Microsoft have never got any money from me so they punish me for that. I use Linux operating systems because every single microsoft computer system program sends a ” phone home ” back door query to microsoft to make sure that money was paid for it. That is why ” hackers ” have no trouble getting into a companies computer system because there are back doors everywhere in windows operating systems. Linux systems cost very little and work better and do not take up as much computer space. If you buy a new computer in the U.S.A. you will find a windows operating system on it. If you do not pay for it it will shut down; that is how Bill Gates got so rich. For two weeks I have been unable to access my drug store photo library because I am not using a microsoft operating system. Bill Gates strikes again. The ” owners and the masters ” intend to make automatons of each and every one of us. Resistance is futile!

    1. John Day Avatar
      John Day

      “Rent collection” forever is the financial capitalist business model.

  18. S. Black Avatar
    S. Black

    This one is really nice, Caitlin. Great imagery, tone, flow. Solid. I can see it ending up in a literary anthology for poetry lovers to ponder and absorb. That’s not trivial; these things actually save young lives. I dearly hope a life spirit is arising within us and if so, I hope Eric Blair’s ghost will know and feel it when it happens. He needed and deserved a happy ending. As do we.

  19. Cal Lash Avatar
    Cal Lash

    Ai se eu te pego

  20. Charles Andrew Robinson Avatar
    Charles Andrew Robinson

    Bill Gates says we’re all gonna die!

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