Brute facts with no whence,

their preferences “just are”; 

no reasons have rhymed them

(or can); why, “enthralled,

you say? –they’ve been installed?

——————-nonsense!

——————-Go: pull back

the curtain,

we’re certain

you’ll just find errata & welter.”

“Let me explain”, so I lecture

(without conjecture);

but they expect another spectacle,

another constricting, sugared tentacle,

another cheap gratification

that does its own work, sans mortification.

 

“The focus groups with the demographic stats

and mining of cognitive evolutionary stacks

have broken our skulls, rolled out our fleshly minds

as piano strings, and the demagogue brats

can pluck which tune investors wish every time;

there is no real escape: if life seems like craps,

know: the outcomes are controlled, stable, designed.”

(–isn’t this how the peace we’ve attained is tracked?)

 

“Hurry up, Professor Jerk,

we don’t have all day!”

they, sighing, say,

rolling their eyes, presuming this my private delight,

unfit to see that these appetites

have been implanted

or else have hacked, like kryptonite,

the inheritance granted

by the prehuman troglodyte

whose wild environs are supplanted

by this curated hyperstimulus avalanche of soundbytes.

 

Then it’s time for appointment TV

so they flee

and forget

without regret,

the gift they neglect:

this liberating low-key glee;

this is past, and I: now scouting, so recalling brings no fret,

but does needle the pin-cushion of my memory.

 

~~~

 

To prefer is inevitable, but be sure to install the silos

around the perimeter of our palaces of commerce,

and to march steadily outwards, but not forever, for one of the tricks to sell

one’s identity is always to have an enemy whom to see,

to kool-aid sniper-scope view them as powerful,

even if that serpent is really an elephant,

and would rather leave you alone

(–and you do realize that isn’t an elephant gun, yes?);

but this gimmick has human collateral,

created by the same skills that entertain us,

even if it’s only seen through that scope,

if at all, and only by the few bothering to look,

who’re not consumed with eating.

 

~~~

 

The laws of inheritance reliably secure

what technologies of wealth-extraction, marching, procure

for families, whose inheritors fail to demure

what dulcimered tunes upon mapped-out minds have ensured:

palaces of wealth, atop plebian-made-manure.