The Revolution Will Not Be Shared

I
In this age of Trumpish tyrants,
too many of us live and work in places
where someone else — boss or client —
is neither partner nor comrade, but our “king.”
Where we’re obligated,
(for form’s sake)
to take the side of totalitarian strangers,
not knowing what they really stand for,
if they stand for anything at all.

I won’t stand for it.

Just yesterday, we noticed the “rise in incivility.”
We hated the new “polarization,”
unconscious of the fact
that the finger letting fly,
sharing the new, comforting lie
was our own.

Once launched, of course,
the new-model lies
can never be untold.
They congregate,
collaborate
and congeal.
They recreate the world
in Our Tyrant’s image:
And even Homeland becomes
a dangerous, loveless place.

II
Too many of us, globally,
are participants in these
diminishingly ‘neutral’ networks,
eager customers of FaceBook,
Google, Amazon, Apple,
and WhatComesNext…
Each firm, the successful harvester
of our once-precious data.

(And what happens when
they depreciate this, too — our ‘identity,’
seemingly, our last “inalienable” asset?)

They, the hard-working planters
of personalized algorithms,
Managing each ray of sunlight
to and from our shrinking laptop minds?

They who convey us
through our personal, “private”
In-form-nation.
Forcing us to wonder
Fake or real?
All news and pictures;
All books and magazines;
All blogs and postings;
All poetry.
It’s all “content,” all Created Equal,
(and happily ineffectual)
For its “benign” distributor,
All of us owned by the same
insanely wealthy Keeper of the Keys.
To more new, conglomerated pipelines,
For Trumpish oligarchs,
Indifferent and indolent
All-Owners.

“Be grateful for your filters,” they tell us.
(Don’t question your arranged marriage;)
Matches, start-ups, projects big and small,
all based
On our past preferences,
God hold sacred our sustaining “feeds,” piping us
Things, all ours — coffee pots, books, ideas and ‘Friends’

News flash: Real independent browsing is extinct.
Gone the way of too many books and small schools;
Buried behind a stack of immediately mundane magazines.
One day, the lines will pipe us only acceptable food;
Acceptable friends… und so weiter …
Befitting our station, according to
The man in the Tower, there.

The revolution will not be shared.

*First published, June 10, 2018.