“What would you do to be guaranteed
One additional, on-demand hour of calm,
Confidence, and pain-free contentment?
What would you do for borrowed wings?
Then don’t condemn the pill thief, the drunk,
The one-armed-bandit lover. Or go ahead,
Son. Maybe condemnation’s the very thing
That does for you what self-destruction
Does for the condemned. Righteousness
Is one proven antidote to hopelessness.
Not one person sneering at the collaborator,
Exposed, the hooker disrobed, the sinner
Of any piquant kind or flavor disclosed breathes
That fire, that curling smoke, without hope.
Righteous anger’s no cure for desperation, true,
But then, neither is any uplifting addiction.
Your human frame’s the result of rewiring
More ordinary reward systems for living
The fit life that leaves more life behind dying
But in such a way that cumulative organization
Balances on individual obsession. Sooner
Than civilization collectively thinks, however,
There won’t be any need for our bodies
Thus framed to win civilizations’ competition.
I’m not kidding, kid. I get off on the notion
That everything we’ve been fine-tuned
To keep in motion will prove irrelevant soon.
Soon we’ll be less than batteries for the words
And numbers carrying on outside of our brains
In anthroformed farmed ecosystems they made
That never have to sleep, dream, or swoon
With any imagination of their own.” Daedalus
Crooned this in the ear of Icarus that afternoon,
That intoxicating, optimistic afternoon.
“That’s my hour of contentment stolen
Without a chance, dance, drug or smug
Sense of moral superiority necessary,
My dizzying vision under a winsome moon.”
Icarus knew his father of invention was a myth
Well suited to swift extinction. Still, he flew.
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