Spectacle!
Spectacle!
Spectacle!

Upon thee I feast  
as your willing
receptacle
thou art my bread's yeast!

Fill me with fear and with grief and doubt
Fill me with joy and with hope I may shout
From atop a tall mount of my own dissolution
And lull me to sleep with your grandiose illusion!

Spectacle!
Spectacle!
Spectacle!

DEAR!

Help me make sludge into mead, crystal clear!
Tell me my roles and opinions and thoughts!
Sell me that which makes my deep emptiness naught!
Oh, you our greatest omnipotent seer!

Spectacle!
Spectacle!
Spectacle!

CAUGHT!

See what you've so serendipitously wrought!
See how so boldly and wondrously you've taught!
For without your guidance, what would be bought?
What would be sold lest the gold you have brought?

Spectacle!
Spectacle!
Spectacle!

FRAUGHT!

What would become of mass cultural trends?
When means for themselves would desist and come ends?
How could we possibly live without you
When you are the arbiter of all that's True?

A boxy adapter with rounded edges

Manufactured to channel power—and yet,

Power that is not theirs. Only to channel it

To channel my Windows to the world

To close their Great Wall on our

Silicon valleys?


AC currents charging this Stylish Design i7

Distracting me

From the Capitalist-embodying communism

Red ruling over depths of blue

Screens, screens of bluelight-damaging sight

The sight to sea beyond

What goes South out to see


Pulling the plug on our freedom of type type type

Keep your distance—we can power your technology.

With Ching chong net worth, networks, and netted to worthless than

The need to work, school, hopes

and dreams.

Velcro strap, bundling up wire after wire after

They wiretapped their way

Through our bluescreen pristine.


Censorship, the anti-coronavirus

But virus? We don’t need your quarantine.

Now over 99%, fully charging us all.

For the mediocre price of freedomless speech


Who is in charge?

What drew you to this job?

Truthfully, survival

I lie and say
I’ve always been passionate about textiles

Like the pretentious clothing this company creates
My answer is carefully tailored to appeal to my market audience

Yesterday I was passionate about data entry
Tomorrow I’ll be passionate about customer retention and management

I’ve learnt to lick the boot that pins me down in place

What does your dream job look like?

I don’t bother telling them that I no longer dream of labour

I recite the appropriate buzzwords
Sense of progression
Work-life balance
Meaningful connections
Bile rises in my throat

What do you hope to achieve in life?

My father wasted away his best years in a job that landed him in hospital
A heart attack and redundancy payout all the thanks he got

All so he could eventually retire and do what he actually loved; woodworking

He’d never been able to make a career of it
He couldn’t find a ‘market’ for it

Maybe it was because he never learnt to market himself, to sell himself

Not in that sense
Instead he sold himself

He sold his body to a timber mill

Maybe he thought it would be temporary
But then he had to give up his woodworking
Because working the wood at the mill left him exhausted

He had to sell his soul for decades until the system finally let him be

I want something different than what the system offers
But there is no alternative to the system

It offers me 50 flavours of consumption
32 different shades of participation
But no option not to consume
Not to participate

I no longer have lofty ideals
When I was young I wanted to be a famous writer
I wanted to travel and see the world

Now I just want to exist

But even my very existence comes at a cost
To merely exist I am still expected to participate
To consume and be consumed
Sell myself to whoever will pay
for what little I have to offer

Thank you for your time