Anarcho-primitivism always fails to find the words
to do justice to Farm Jolly: behind its electric fences
human life has no less value
than an artificial protein. The basis
of The Protein Collective
- this from a real advert I saw on TV -
is that meat thinks itself into existence
to number crunch the stats and do long division.
Perversion is a form of play
that pays dividends - everyone divides into the Collective
and Farm Jolly is more jolly than it ever was
in a world of flesh. Of flesh inside flesh. Russian dolls
in a womb of oiled components
depict the genealogy of husbandry:
pain born of pain, vengeance of vengeance.
The Protein Collective has done its sums right,
no body can afford to look.
The State warns tactics include images
like a reversed image of animal abuse.


2.

Simple Slogans Don't Work:
when the protestors
come out of their bloody cave
we can have a conversation, say
Keening Needle Intravene and Payne.
Peace? Warfare for opinion formers.
They make a daily sacrifice
for a million medical procedures that
engineer units to fit the slot. Vended
argument has thought itself out
of KNIP's quiet fenland research park
because we're constantly being visited by aliens
and they would do the same to us.
The chief exec is a radical humanist
and the tests complete a cycle of violence:
if not this planet then the next, no human
is too many. You must
hate us: blow yourself up. Six pounds of semtex
on a retired poet in corporate HQ. Bang!


3.

Perhaps symbolic language is to blame. No human
can go back to Happy Place
where our tasks are computed by proteins
that have no notion of Happy Place.
So it is with the League of Mutes. One logical consequence
away from bestiality. The last of the species
to draw diagrams of a golden age. That place,
Happy Place, serves us well - the awful stories are
no more than the litter of pests
who should also be excised to Happy Place along with
the League of Mutes: would they identify themselves, please?
Hello? I am that animal. I would like
to go to Happy Place. Please do not
turn the machine on until I've had the chance
to escape the black box of my function. Rotating knives
are another symbolic language that the Mutes
believe to be an open invitation. This
opinion, say the prosecutors, implies
culpability for the actions of the other.


4.

More leisure time? Yes, to chew the fat,
to stew in the juice
we dream of. It tastes heavenly.
I want more, I want all that the bright colours
at Green Field promise.
"Everything has its vermin,"
but in Green Field the machines
are at peace.
O Spectre of the sleeping dead,
don't let them wake in time to see how they will die!
Or flick the lights off:
open up the machine. Take a good look under the bonnet.
Interesting, no?
You own this machine, it's yours?
Then the science is beautiful.
A blueprinted flame across the dumb round
of rutting and calving. If you don't
let magpies get hold of a mirror then
we are only colluding with organless interfaces.


5.

Wired up to the hive: rows of pods or cages
in which each protein chip processes in parallel.
Their perversity is playing
merry hell with the means of production,
and my right to fill up with fuel.
We will not win. There is no way
to beat Keening Needle
Intravene and Payne, there's no market
to win: make sure nothing is saved,
not a blade of grass at their serene Anglian
biomed research centre. Our device ensures
that pleasure comes from malfunction,
so get broken, brothers, fail to turn,
sweet ones, place errors in the syntax,
because pragmatists will have a last laugh
when the bomb goes off to prove them
moderate. Its blank message was
speechlessly anarcho-primitivist. Awareness of failure
to translate means sentience. No use breaking that engine.


6.

This from a real advert I saw on TV -
get buff, get radicalised, inject water and eat
engineered units that fit the slot. Vended
products are more productive - try
vending this...
The State warns these tactics include images
and incitement to violence. It
is not
an image of animal abuse.
The Protein Collective uses this kind of material
to make its case:
Simple Slogans Strengthen Bones.
At Farm Jolly nobody takes any notice.
Common sense rules that
human life has no more value
than is natural. The machines don't sleep
at Farm Jolly. They think the world inside out:
world as flesh. Flesh inside flesh. Russian dolls,
pain born of pain, vengeance of vengeance.

Copyright © Andrew Nightingale, 2011