What a pair of words he uses:
nerve strangle; he employs
them instead of the deadening
euphemistic trio: big-screen TV;
track the obvious vector of brainlessness;
poison of epidemic proportions
with mercury digitized, disseminated
on YouTube; its vids-gone-viral transmit
the gigabyte lie directly into human
neurons—oh that it were pixelated
arsenic and, at the very least, we could
first go slowly mad as poets.
But no. Lingerings are too dangerous.
The dreaming machines are strategically
coded for instant dendrite suffocation,
the soul gags on its own mind.
You’ve been hacked.
Karla Linn Merrifield has had 1000+ poems appear in dozens of journals and anthologies. She has 15 books to her credit. Following her 2018 Psyche’s Scroll (Poetry Box Select) is the full-length book Athabaskan Fractal: Poems of the Far North from Cirque Press. Her newest poetry collection, My Body the Guitar, recently nominated for the National Book Award, was inspired by famous guitarists and their guitars and published in December 2021 by Before Your Quiet Eyes Publications Holograph Series (Rochester, NY). She is a frequent contributor to The Songs of Eretz Poetry Review. Web site: karlalinnmerrifield.org/; blog at karlalinnmerrifeld.wordpress.com/; Tweet @LinnMerrifiel