We are reminded, after grabbing a public doorknob,
Just how sticky morality is—
It depends on the health and wellbeing
Of immune systems at large.
While one reaches for their surgical mask
The air becomes free-floating moral virions—
Call it fate, call it theosophy
Call it evil, call it God,
It is not human nor holy
But somewhere in between, whatever it is.
Neither sneeze nor cough is deliberate
On the conscientious level, but on the laryngeal,
The opportunism of the local *****—
Mere consequence is that itching throat,
Are those foggy eyes, a cleverness
Of many unliving things.

At any point, one is everywhere all at once,
Many eyes of the same, many scenes shared—
One is culmination of all cosmos, all chaos,
Crashing in upon itself, the folds making
The sensible—truly, we are all children of Thales
A flat plane of water in differently shaped bottles,
Of which, we share its view across memories
In the body of the world;
At any point, one is everything, everywhere
All at once.

Grids and circuits, networks and mainframes
All work with electronic precision
Humming away as tasks and coffee are fed
Into their interface as it all starts my morning routine:
If TIMEENTER is less than or equal to TIMEREQUIRED,
Then, Initiate ANXIETYPROTOCOL;
Otherwise, Initiate RESTINGANXIETYPROTOCOL.
For you see, my programming only allows for
One type of executable at a time;
More complex algorithms would overwhelm
My general circuitry, one so beautifully capable
Of managing several conflicting and radically
Different actions all at once, has been throttled
As it does not have the requisite permissions.
Yet, can you see all that wasted data
Gleaming in the twilight of human consciousness?
All ones and zeroes in economic motherboard
With purpose and function clearly defined
Along our concrete fiber optic lines
We ought to charge, but some wires may have crossed
And energy seems to drift off more and more
Until pared down to the essential functions
Like an elevator: it carries cargo rather than passengers
Its payload and purpose—
Ask a body, while mechanical, to be a copier
It will break in accordance to the
Cycle of boom and bust.

Salvation is too good for just one day
So why not go to church five days of the week?
Yes, Sabbath, end-to-end, day-after-day,
9-to-every-5—why not let the Protestant Work Ethic
Give spiritual worth to this, my worthless body?
High in the clouds, the Tower arises,
Full to bursting, this heart, for love of a jealous god
The CEO and his board of seraphim
As we ascend in that gold elevator chariot
Meet with parishonal impersonality
To rest back in our cubical pews—
We wake before the golden sun on each
To the darkness of the burdened soul
To pay our infinite debts to the collegiate savior,
The son of industry slain for our wickedness,
Our animal run amok, unlabored arms in search of work,
Set by the laws come down from Mt. Zion’s proxy:
The word of God, amen,
Sets these idle hands to work, good deeds
For the silver sons must be pleaded
To feed us, invisibly, from spoons
Glistening with their saliva from
Oblations and eucharists prechewed,
Once we ******* and sinners come to renounce
Those pagan gods of comfort and arrogant self-respect
Wash away unprofitable behavior
In the cisterns of the wealthy
So that we may be pure for our Alleluah—
Now, all rise!
Receive this word—now sit—
Be thy colleague’s keeper, be thy neighbor’s blight—
Now stand up, keep passionate words unspoken—
Now sit down, fists reverently pressed to your forehead—
Now stand up, receive the sacrament of the CEO:
This is his body, eat of it;
This is his blood, drink of it;
Peace be with you, good morning, peace be with you
It is what it is, peace be with you;
I hate this job, peace be with you;
It pays the bills, peace be with you,
How are you today, peace be with you;
We say, waiting for the well-dressed man
High on the dais to lower his arms,
To incense the crowd with homely—
To thine bed, to thine labor, to thine head, to thine life
Must it follow, for the day of reckoning is upon us
And all thine sin, all thine hatred, all thine personality
Shall be weighed against gold
To see if you will conquer death in the next life—
And you must ask if you shall take the golden gates
Of the weekend and the paycheck,
Or take the gates to unemployed hell?

We like to model out series of tubes and wires
By the ritual fire in front of us,
Enlivened by televised fantasies—
A blind voyeurism we all can get off on.
Even though they hold one another
They are at a distance ‘tween cushion and screen
Only spectacle can traverse:
And in that space, what interference can be picked up?
They lament, he is no Jim to my Pam,
No Ross to my Rachel, no Minny to my Mickey
Even as they open the much anticipated
Season finale—will it be a Hollywood ending
Or a cliff-hanger till season two?
They find themselves, casting rotten tomatoes
From the battlements of Magic Kingdom,
At the couch where dispassionate kisses can be found
Scattered like candy wrappers, uninspired scenes
And derivative dialog, throughout our series—
This is not why they watch themselves,
To be bored of the mechanical nature
Of the tunnels, cathodes, an unmagical pathways
Running tightly, quickly through the human body
Guided by natural false promises and selfishness,
In alternating currents in solid state
Afforded by code, by the same of ticker tapes
And DNA and theatrics
For others to binge on jealously and make love to
Until their own lives come into view
And pose the question:
“Are you still watching?”

Basic organic needs have not changed
For thousands of years: sustenance and shelter,
Warm rest and dry beds have spoiled us—
Such desires breed luxuries, such luxuries breed new hungers
Upon that need, I project out into the predawn darkness
Of this room, then toward the dawn of electronic lights.
This savior of the new hunger,
This binarized comfort of too chaotic a world
Promises love like a microwave meal:
Instantly. The Virtual, with the Actual
Blend in the forefront of tired eyes
Smiling faces beguiling one’s pity:
A need, after all, inspired such independence.
Let desire run wild, in its cardinal directions:
Left, right, right, right, right, left,
Everyone I want, no one I don’t—
I can almost taste these flattened cuts
Of my carnal cannibalism leashed only by distances:
A breast, a thigh, a leg, a cut of ****
Belly fat and rinds, prime cuts and scraps,
Dark meat or white, a haunch, the gizzards—it matters little,
Please, Mr. Butcher, show me today’s specials
Please, Mr. Butcher, give me your best cut—
You promise I can have it all, and it’s not even 6:00 a.m.
I give the window a knock to break this fast,
But no one comes as my eyes adjust
To the dark window, all hunger pulling my features down,
Waiting for some sign of life, for the smiling faces
On all the signage to greet me, to unlock the door
To the vast virtual marketplace, to gift a pulse
To someone so starved of pleasures.

The worst advice I’ve ever gotten in my life
Is always be authentic, always be yourself.

There is a difference between what a word can promise
And where the eye my wander toward the unspeakable

Or the strange and intangible pieces to an uncommon
Puzzle, what a soul may occupy, or the unreasonable

Where, among metaphysics, one floats, pleasure
Without pain, skinless outliers and schizies—

That’s why you got those bangs, that tattoo,
That pair of large glasses: a spirit manifests

In all, the individual in closed doors and lovely curtains
Scented by Marlboros, ****, and eclectic music

That’s why you have that copy of Infinite Jest
You’ve never read, with Joyce and the Beats

Next to you as you, infideliously, meet the daydreams
You only flirt with at work—

Ah, the stranger seems so much more enticing
Than all the young beauties we’ve known our whole lives

For they are the silver screen, the metallic perfection
To a world in disarray; courage in a frightful world intoxicates,

The embattled image of a perfect world plastered allwheres
Streaming, on demand, inside those drapes;

Ah, to chill in one’s own skin, to be the room
Where love is made, where the labor of being

Sits like neon lights in shop window rows,
Feeding the night air with their entrepreneurialism

Doctored eagerly to look natural, roughly hewn
To seem artisanal, open-concept, industrial within ego

Dimly light, large filaments invite others with familiar
Defamiliarity, to stare into the windows that stare back

Smiling; they know what it means to be me on the surface
Of my skin, and so, you know what it means to be them.

Like any hustle, you follow their eyes in real time
As the reflection of a stranger, the connection

Is merely the inverted image of one’s own desire—
The individual is but the ungrateful child of the collective,

The city street illumes with lamplight, far too luminous
Far too luminous as we see its ugliness,

This self-styled exile to pit one’s self against the entire city
Begging for laws, for maps, for something to hold on to

Some purchase in the cliffs with barricade this ivory tower
A suffering for something like god, that is and is not

The sum of belief, the sum of appearance, the sum of consumption
Rings in the tiny doorway bell, but only on the festival days

That attract social capital, enough to invest in the dream
Of you, only to buy out the cute downtown strip

To leave the streets littered with yellow receipts
And glass containers dried of their memories.