H
e a r t S o n s & H e a r t
D a u g h t e r s
of A l l e n G i n s b e r g
N
a p a l m H e a l t h S p a : R e p o r t 2 0 1 4 :
A r c h i v e s E d i t i
o n
KEVIN HAYES
Designated An Enemy
Of The State
designated as an enemy of the state by the powers that be, I was
taken into custody by the police one morning on my way to work
&
when I asked the arresting officers what I had done, the only
response I
received was their silence, for they ignored my question as if I
did not
exist. . .they blindfolded me & took me to the maximum
security prison
built to incarcerate & isolate traitors so they could do no
social harm, a
prison established in a secret location so that unknown
conspirators
could not attack & set the captives free, the blindfold
imposed upon me
as a form of psychic torture so I would never know where in the
world I
had been imprisoned. . . once we reached the maximum security
prison,
I was stripped naked & immediately locked up in a solitary confinement
cell because my captors intended to keep me separated from all
contact
suspicious that I would use any association with others to mount a
conspiracy against the order they were born to defend as patriotic
citizens of our nation. . .
my isolation cell was so small I could barely fit inside it &
indeed, my captors indicated that its dimensions had prompted them
to
choose it as most suitable to accommodate me because I was a
traitor &
therefore, I did not deserve the luxury of enough space to allow
any
motion. . . indeed, the solitary confinement cell that surrounded
me
forced me to remain standing erect at all times since it did not
provide
me with the length or the width necessary to assume another position.
. .
besides, my new habitat was so spartan
it did not furnish me with a
chair or a bed, a condition my captors no doubt imposed upon me
because they wanted me to become familiar with the subtle torture
of
absolute exhaustion, an attitude I inferred when they taunted me
with the
advice that I needed to learn how to sleep on my feet. . . besides
depriving me of rest, my captors also deprived me of food &
water
providing me only with a rare crust of stale bread or a cup of
lukewarm
water when they calculated I would be on the verge of starvation
or fatal
dehydration taunting me that my bare subsistence diet was a
benefit to
me since my solitary confinement cell lacked a toilet I could use
so more
substantial meals would rapidly make the stench intolerable. . .
no light
entered into my solitary confinement cell because my captors did
not
allow me the benefit of bars immersing me instead in a cage that
had
been carved from solid rock, even the door a slab of granite set
on
hinges, more like a tomb than a cell, a parallel that was driven
home
when my captors referred to me as the breathing dead. . . locked
inside of
my solitary confinement cell, I could not measure time & my
captors
opened the door so seldom I began to feel as if I had been buried
alive
forever, a burial that was not disrupted until the authorities
sent orders
that I should be tortured into confessing all the crimes I had
committed
against the state, the crimes that justified their designation of
me as
traitor. . .
as my captors escorted me to the torture room they had prepared
to host me, they laughed in anticipation of the spectacle I would
present
to their eager eyes as they watched me suffer telling me that even
an
immediate & complete confession would not escape the pain they
planned to impose upon me since they did not want to waste the
effort
they had already put into the preparation of the torture room. . .
I
protested that I was innocent & had nothing to confess begging
my
captors to take pity upon me because I did not deserve the
punishment I
was about to receive, but they told me the authorities would never
believe my claim of innocence & besides, their desire to
inflict torture
upon me was a function of their own pleasure & not a function
of my
guilt. . . once my captors had brought me to the torture room,
they
locked me into a chair that had been equipped with manacles for my
wrists & ankles, manacles that kept me bound in place so
tightly I knew
I could not hope to escape the tortures that were to come. . . as
my
captors attached a battalion of electrodes across my flesh, I looked
around the torture room & saw that television cameras &
monitors had
been set up, a sight that baffled me until my captors told me that
the
authorities had ordered my torture & my confession to be
broadcast live
to the nation so that all citizens could serve on my hanging jury.
. .
as soon as the cameras began rolling, I saw myself exposed
naked on the monitors as one of my captors flipped the switch on
the
generator connected to the battalion of electrodes that had been
taped to
me sending the first jolt of electricity thru each & every
inch of my
body, a jolt that forced me to evacuate the ghosts of piss &
shit from my
empty bladder & bowels. . . an interrogator began to question
me
demanding that I describe the ways I had betrayed the state, but I
stubbornly remained silent because I knew that no confession I
could
invent would prove satisfactory enough to stop the round of
torture I had
been condemned to endure certain that nothing I could say or do
could
help me to escape any of the pain my captors were determined to
impose
upon me. . . I spent days chained to the chair as frequent waves
of
electricity flowed thru me, waves I learned to embrace as a fixed
condition of my existence since my captors left me no choice other
than
to do so, a torture session that was never interrupted because my
captors
worked in shifts so that they could deprive me of sleep, a torture
session
that ignited me to howl for my vast television audience until I
became so
exhausted I no longer had the strength to howl in response to the
shocks
that jolted me to my depths. . .
I endured the hell on earth my captors had prepared for me at the
order of the authorities who had identified me as a traitor to the
state for
a solid week when at last the torture ended even though I had never
been
broken to confess, both because I was determined to defy all my
accusers & because I had been told my confession would not
cause my
torturers to spare me any pain & indeed, I found that the only
reason my
routine of electric shock had ended was that the time had come for
the
audience to vote me innocent or guilty, a vote they could enter
instantaneously thru their televisions simply by pressing the
appropriate
button on their remote controls. . . everyone in the state voted
because
the authorities required them to exercise their franchise as free
citizens
& when all the votes had been transmitted, no one had voted
for my
innocence unanimously determining my guilt instead deciding also
that I
should be executed as the penalty for my crime, a verdict that
puzzled
me since no specific accusations had ever been made against me
& no
evidence had ever been presented to serve as the foundation for
the
judgment they had made. . . before my execution could be carried
out, a
battalion of one hundred renegades broke into the torture room,
overpowered my captors & liberated me, a sudden redemption I
did not
expect since the vote to condemn me had seemed to be unanimous,
the
battalion of renegades taking me to the underground refuge they
inhabited, a refuge that could not be penetrated by the power of
the state. . .
once the operation designed to rescue me had been successfully
completed, we fortified our sanctuary hidden deep beneath the
concrete
streets controlled by the authorities who could only be satisfied
if they
received absolute obedience to the iron law they had invented to
impose
upon the nation insistent upon the regimentation of all citizens
wanting
to dictate every thought & every deed anyone dared to conceive
or
execute, whether they were inside our borders or happened to
travel
outside. . . because my torture had kept me awake for a solid
week, I
could not help but lose consciousness as soon as my saviors
carried me
to the bed they kindly provided me when I expressed my need for it
& I
slept for several days needing to cure the exhaustion I suffered
before I
could gather the strength necessary to ask the questions my
experience
of miraculous redemption from imminent execution had raised since
the
landslide vote to convict me had seemed to prove that every hand
in the
nation was turned against me, a conclusion that the operation to
rescue
me showed to be false. . . when I returned to consciousness, I
thought at
first that I was a corpse dreaming I was surrounded by the renegades
who had rescued me telling them I could not believe in their
existence
because the public had unanimously convicted me & sentenced me
to
death so it was not logically possible that they had come to
rescue me
from the sentence I had certainly endured. . . the renegades told
me that I
was still alive & that they did exist & had rescued me
explaining that the
authorities had brainwashed the public determining that the
verdict
would be unanimous against me, a verdict they did not participate
in
because they were hidden in the underground, in the refuge they
had
established so they could escape the control that the authorities
sought to
impose upon all citizens. . .
after I was told that the authorities had brainwashed the public
so
that everyone would favor my condemnation, I theorized that they
must
exercise subtle control over the citizens of our nation in all
other areas of
existence since I could not perceive myself as being anything
other than
insignificant in the eyes of the state, a suspicion I shared with
my
underground comrades who responded by showing me the intelligence
their spies had gathered, copies of government documents that
absolutely confirmed my theory indicating that our officials had
been
elected after they had manipulated the minds of the voters, a
revelation
that explained why the losing candidates in our elections never
received
any votes at all. . . I told the battalion of renegades who had
rescued me
that we needed to prepare ourselves to mount a revolution, an act
of
rebellion that would certainly be justified since our government
did not
rule by the free consent of the governed & therefore it had no
valid
claim upon our continued allegiance, a proposition that earned
their
universal consent, so we began a strategy session trying to figure
out
how we could topple the secret tyrants our intelligence proved the
authorities to be, given that only one hundred citizens had
slipped free of
their control mechanisms to find liberation in the underground. .
. at
last, we reached the conclusion that we needed to find out how the
government had seized such absolute control over the public mind
hoping that the knowledge would enable us to disrupt the brainwash
so
that we could gather the followers necessary to have some chance
of
victory, a strategy that required us to send out spies assigned to
dig out
the information we needed, a vital mission that had to be
successfully
completed if we were to have any chance of liberating citizens who
had
been dominated by means so subtle they did not suspect they were
slaves. . .
we decided to send three men up from the underground with the
objective of discovering the means used by the government to
impose its
will upon the people & I volunteered to be one of the three
because I
wanted to be on the scene when we cracked the mystery, just in
case we
found it possible to destroy their ability to brainwash on the
spot, an
opportunity to bear witness to history I did not want to miss. . .
we
emerged from the underground in the dead of night penetrating all
government offices systematically one by one intent upon finding
the
means of mind control that was being exercised by the state
searching
thoroughly yet quickly because we wanted to solve the mystery
before
dawn eager to destroy the elicit foundation of the state's power,
a
destruction that was necessary to clear the way for the revolution
that
would set the people free. . . we became exhausted investigating
the vast
network of our government, exhausted & frustrated because we
did not
find it easy to located the objective we needed to find, but at
last, we
stumbled by accident into a storage room in the basement of the
building
that housed the offices of our nation's legislators where we found
a
machine glowing & humming as it broadcast a subtle pulse
spreading
coast to coast, a machine that was conveniently labeled with a
sign
identifying it as the national thought control device. . . we had
carried
guns with us in case we needed them & now they came in handy
as we
pumped bullets into the machine until its glow was extinguished
& its
hum ground to a halt just as the sun broke above the horizon
gracing our
nation with enough light so that we were able to see the
revolution
beginning out in the streets after we walked up the stairs &
looked thru a
first floor window. . .
we ran out to join the crowd of rebels we saw discovering that
we did not have to do anything at all to recruit the people to our
cause
since, much to our surprise, they turned completely against the
government as soon as we destroyed the mind control machine
demonstrating that their previous allegiance had only been a
function of
the pulse that had invaded their heads & now that the pulse
was gone,
they realized that they had been brainwashed & they would not
rest until
they toppled the authorities responsible & seized the reins of
government
themselves. . .as the next step in our revolution, we decided by
consensus
that we would mount an attack upon the White House itself with the
intent of deposing our tyrant President, but when we reached the
gates
protecting the place, we found its lawn full of citizens who had
decided to
support the current administration & I could only infer that
these citizens
believed national security to be so much in jeopardy that the
brainwashing machine had not been the only factor in determining
their
fervent support for the powers that were & perhaps would
continue to be,
an opposition we expected to face since, when we had deliberated
our
first revolutionary action at our strategy meeting, we realized
that some
of those who had been enslaved by the brain control machine would
choose of their own free will to remain slaves, an opposition that
made
our victory in the conflict about to come a matter of some doubt.
. .
[Originally published in NHS 2004,
http://www.poetspath.com/napalm/nhs04/Kevin_Hayes.html.]