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Lawrence Hall Jan 2021
Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

                                 Coffee Shop Darwinians

          “We’ll set a fine, new, well-oiled machine in place
            of the old one and this time we’ll put the Normans
            into it instead. That’s what justice means, isn’t it?”

                                        -Saxon Monk in Becket

No, of course it didn’t have to happen
We’re not campus coffee shop Darwinians
Determined that five innocents needed to die
Within the gears of our new, well-oiled machine

And that more should come, chanting “O Machine!” 1
“Follow the Science!” and “Learn. To. Code!”
As they sacrifice themselves to a Tweeter-sanctioned
Infestation of Manifest Destiny

And I’ve got a feeling, as you might agree:
No one on either side quotes Dostoyevsky


1 “The Machine Stops,” E. M. Forster
A poem is itself.

— The End —