AGITATION

We’re in a bad way
Rising tides of windswept waters
deadly droughts and forest fires
trees and reefs and bees, Godspeed!
an ancient glacier lost at sea

As screaming screens all whisper, winking:
fear thy neighbor, hate thyself
like and follow, fuck a stranger
pick a side, and worship wealth ;)

Or 14 million children chained
in distant fields and factories
who pick, assemble, peel, and loom
the selfsame stuff we wear and eat

Tonight they sleep in pens, in pain
or trafficked, raped repeatedly
from seedy local motel rooms
to mega-yachts on shining seas

It’s a shame, a sorrow beyond
what the heart or the
page can contain

CORPORATION

One big business, Moloch Inc.
predominates all global trade
The brands you covet, love and need
are M’s alone—Big M pervades

Work and shop there? Likely do
Got some stock shares? Good for you
Store still open? Know it’s true:
Mo’s amassing loads of loot

Poison in the drinking water?
Sucks, but Moloch’s making money
Gunman slaughters kindergartners?
Stock’s a-bumpin’ big time, buddy

Millions cuffed, convicted
sentenced, never coming back?
Boy, you know old Moloch’s
going deeper in the black

Distant mines and missiles
sickly kids get smithereened
parents pin their hopes to rafts
of polyethylene? Cha-ching!

By 2030s man so thirsty
armed, afraid, depressed—
what now, a global death match
starring all the non-noblesse? ¥€$

QUESTION

By what right a man
own a river, a mountain?

By what right a man
own a woman, a man?

By what right a business
imperil a child?

By what right not try
to do right while we can?

FORTIFICATION

Here’s to the 200 families (the Bicent!)
who got themselves most of Mo’s stock
It’s not even close now!
The scoreboard’s on fire!
The Bicent is winning, huzzah!

Hooray, hurrah for the Bicent!
Got billions with minimal tax
The climate’s gone bonkers
They’ve built themselves bunkers
Now what’s one to think about that?

Can any or all of those 200 families
fully or fairly be blamed?
And wouldn’t some others among us
have done if we could
what they did just the same?

So here’s to our wonderful winners, the Bicent!
Incredible what you have done
You’d better get down there
The temperature’s rising
So long now let’s see what you’ve won

INHUMATION

When the Bicent, bunkered deep,
should try for concrete-crusted sleep
in spacious, well-appointed tombs
with zero sky in fifteen rooms,
on sticky pillow, furrowed brow,
and cumbrous, unconvincing crown—
will their prayers for death’s release
proceed more from their fear or grief?

COLLECTION

Data point:

Pretty much all
of pretty much everyone’s
everything’s already
out there, you copy?

Your words deleted, spoken, sent
your scrips refilled and pennies spent
your viewing pleasures, fair and foul
your movements: body, mouse, and bowel

Each feature of
your face, your home
ingurgitated via phone
(or smart assistant toaster drone)

Wherefore? For Mo—it’s no surprise:
the data’s algorithmized
to calibrate those artful lies
that bully us to buy and bow,
and celebrate what’s frankly foul,
then wring us out until we’re spent,
believing that we’re innocent

RECLAMATION

Just as the thundering
western black rhino
all privacy, too, is dead. That said,

What if we decide that our data—
all these literal bits of ourselves—
may no longer be used against us?

What if we instead insist that
every last datum before us
be for us? Imagine:

The whole of humankind online
and streaming all locations
facts, communications, actions
fully open, bathed in sunlight
seismic conversations rippling
by the billions twixt the manifold
relationships unfolding round
an all-connected globe

IDEATION

What subtle solutions,
what elegant algorithms,
what transparent wonders
would we build in such a world?

With an ocean of bits
at our fingertips,
how might we rethink
human safety, school, work,
wellness, and joy?

What would become
of suspicion and spin?
Artifice and greed?
Poverty and war?
Nation and Moloch?

How would we live,
and what would we be
when all are all-seeing
and all are all-seen?

SOLUTION

We must demand the creation
of a single, constant, global stream
which makes at once available
all data to all people at all times

No more hidden harms, no lies
no unattended anguished cries
let’s celebrate the open wide
and share ourselves there deeply

ACTION

Moloch’s molestation
of our mother make you mad?
Blue about the blameless babies
bubbling up ashore?
Hate the fingerprints of slaves
on half the stuff you have?
Wish for better weather
less to suffer, something more?

Friend, you’re not alone

And if ever you gather
the courage to gaze
just ahead down the road
through the flood and the flame
where the light of our kind
seems to wobble and wane,
and feel sickened, unsettled
seduced, and afraid—that’s OK

Within us lies another way