outsource yourself forever

With thoughts outsourced to machines that drink,

Then manually breathe out clouds

those who learned to conceptualize grief

will direct their anger upwards,

Those who don’t will punch at walls

whose ancestors fought to erect

A rainy day away from killing innocents at work

It’s the trinkets in the cubicle

that bind us to our dads

And regretful tears they’d shed at reading headlines they don’t want

I must keep their dream alive of being stuck in nineteen eighty

All comparisons will end up framing everything as worse,

Except for the franchise that refuses to return

To adapt to automation is to drown your kids in shit

Give them endless streams of visual diarrhea

But it doesn’t taste that bad, you say,

like public education

All subscription fees were paid

for you not to end up unhoused

And the well-dressed boys still laugh at you

Whenever you go silent

Nothing you can say

So you outsource yourself forever