Upon the promise of fast
release from lonely confinement,
subject to the crook and hook of money,
We squeeze through screens
into a nuisance of niches,
an infinity of social media silos,
Where we choose cellmates to wander with
through yellow brickyards between our ears,
where Appetite displays samples of:
Generous greed,
Chaste lust,
Judicious gluttony,
Jocular wrath, and
Pollyannic despair…
No papers to sign, the first one’s free.
To rely on device, to type by thumb,
is to surrender the freedom of the hand,
the art and craft of natural intelligence, which
traces our fall from the airy heights of Thermopylae
all the way down to Florida’s hoary swamps.
Dave Read