An Animal in Human Functions

The quote is from the "Economic & Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844". And, as it seems to describe our situation, I wrote a poem.

I work amid the cluster of offices in the Belconnen town centre district, hence the street names.

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The result we arrive at then is that man (the worker) only feels
himself freely active in his animal functions of eating, drinking and procreating, at most in his dwelling and dress, and feels himself an animal in his human functions.


Bunches across Chan Street to Swanson Court.
Wide Cameron Avenue afternoon
Above the Westfield Shopping Town.
Let out from meetings, lifts and offices.
We meld, one massy tome of animals
Now free and active for rare hour rush.
Drawn the shitting tone false free clippington,
And so to lunch. And so sixty minutes.

And I wander walking slow my way
Too bright light echo clattering courtyard.
Dear healthless farm yard corpse piled cash.
Hard false white wooden advertisement
Laminated tables and moulded chairs.
A constant chatter spites Tina Turner
Breezing whistling public address system.
Groups peel off pointless stores to purchase
Alone piled wide gifts, petty symbols
Of time spent and lost and traded away.
A handful of beans swapped the crossroads.
Not free, rather a subtle relentless
Compulsion drummed from infant to aged.

Toothless roughened mouths drop globs of matter.
Wilted lettuce, embracing cheese, dry bland
Rolls of loafs of bread. Pram seated babies
Draw cooing bottles, chemical leaching,
Petroleum, into belching cola.
Piled remains on vacated tables.
Homeless, ghostwise, cruise pale witless crumbs,
Limp chips sweaty of paper tearing grease,
Gnawed and rejected buns, clotted gristle,
Swine flu flesh, spat out hugs of lowing fat.
Shiny sugar grit and smears of flavour.

Wolfing rows of workers eating tasteless
Remorseless, phone ringing, clock watching.
Time is the horizon of our being,
Measured out in taylored curds and clods precise.
This workshop line up sandwich counter,
Knifes of sleek as fat butter, olive marg,
Slapped slices thin of yeasty salted flesh,
Pale radiations of salad pieces,
Stripped and grated carrots sugar beet.
Drone back drawn candle flame waste compulsion.