The Grinch Awakens

Christmas 2015, with apologies to Allen Ginsberg

I saw the best minds of my children’s generation destroyed by Lucasfilm, attention-deficient hysterical naked,

Dragging their fingers across iPad screens looking for an angry fix,

Towheaded preschoolers burning with the ancient nostalgic connection to the mediocre starry space opera of their parents’ youth,

Who potty trained and diapered and costumed sat wriggling and sugared in the supernatural darkness of Cineplexes and IMAX domes contemplating Jedi,

Who bared their brains to two dimensional characters and savage marketing campaigns under Christmas trees illuminated,

Who passed through preschools with blank cool eyes hallucinating Tatooine and blatherskite Yoda’s empty koans during story time,

Who were expelled from family dinners for R2-D2 beeps and Wookie yells and pasting Princess Leia stickers on the windows of the Subaru,

Who cowered in unmade bedrooms in jammies, burning holiday gift cards on themed Lego sets and listening to their parents’ tortured hermeneutics through the wall,

Who talked continuously seventy hours from park to playground to play date about storm troopers and light sabers and Jar Jar Binks,

A lost battalion of bedtime conversationalists yacketayakking screaming vomiting whispering fan fiction memories and Anakin anecdotes and Jedi kicks and shocks of Senate chamber and reactor core.

…

What sphinx of durasteel and armorweave pried open their skulls and ate up their brains and imagination?

Moloch! Screen time! Sensory overload! Sedentary days and nature deficit! Moloch!

They saw it all! the wild eyes! the holy yells! They bade farewell! They jumped off the bandwagon to childhood! unscripted play! picking flowers! digging mud! Down to the earth! into the forest!

 

image credit: Yoda Claus, YodaJeff http://www.yodajeff.com/pages/seasonal/christmas/

source poem: Howl, Allen Ginsburg https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/howl-parts-i-ii

 

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