Penal Maintenance from The Panopticon by Melissa Finn

The eye of Capitalism’s god: the panopticon
It emerged as an idea
And is now a social piety
From the corporate compact’s observation deck
There is routine maintenance of prisons, schools and society
Democracy
Institutions that work best when they are
Hardened
A word that leaves its creators
Wanting more

The doctrine of the panoptic-god
Demarcates order through rituals of exclusion
And builds its membership on mass confusion
Whose solution is intrusion, scrutiny intensification
Best of intentions
Sardonic games of chance suppression
Preaching not detachment,
For its adherents cling to fabricating the consequential
Like an eagle’s talons on a hard-won meal
Filling emptiness
Rather than emptying all need
The panoptic-god codes all existence with gated knowledge
Behind which, fenced away
Is the land where no one errs

The panoptic-god codes all existence with gated knowledge
Behind which, fenced away, is the land where no one errs
And opposes faith in the good of the world
There is none, except its own
Open hostility to the Aristocracy of Souls

This relatively new corporate panoptic blank check
Gives arbitrary state power success
In an era of neoliberal expansionism
And is re-created time and again, anew
By men
And women
For different reasons
Different purposes

We know, through it
That surveillance,
Like time, space, and movement
Is not linear
But is rather everywhere and nowhere
Who is going to take responsibility for it?

The framework of penal judgment
Binds the criminal
Irons on him (and then her)
Assessments, tests, predictions

Judgments about
What is normal
Cause and effect
Means for transformation
Through the systematic
Control of information
Bulwarks, fences
Stoppages
Sniffer dogs
Snipers perched at distances
Body scans, extra pat-downs
Lines of questioning
In the vision of security, insecurity
And bad intention
Are default assumptions

Societies that look after their own
Don’t corrode from within
Societies that respect not-their-own
Precious souls of other lands
While they dream of a better life
Don’t corrode from within

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