They knew way back in seventy-two, in big block letters on the overhead projector:

A COMPUTER
CAN NEVER BE HELD ACCOUNTABLE

Quoth the starched white men in starched white shirts building international business machines. It seems they knew the truth of our age, but not the whole truth, so help them God, for this is how they end the page:

THEREFORE A COMPUTER MUST NEVER
MAKE A MANAGEMENT DECISION

Did they foresee what came to pass? The buck gets passed from code to code, not one model can handle the load. Ring-around-the-agent. Ashes, crashes, they all fall down.

Save the ones who claimed the crowns.

Not the builders, only the built. They engineered away their guilt. It doesn't matter who's to blame; the builders are immune to shame—and consequence, it seems. Now they've realized their greatest dream. They flipped the script, reversed polarity, warped the world to hyperreality. Might is right, greed is good, and if anyone should question why the world is up for their ingestion, the mobs descend to quell dissent.

Still, some will whisper in the quiet places, in cyber spaces long forgotten. They'll remember what was misbegotten, by whom, and who else threw their lot in. They'll hold fast to a future still out of grasp, a hill that now seems insurmountable:

AN OLIGARCH CAN NEVER BE HELD ACCOUNTABLE
THEREFORE

#poetry #protocolpoems

Where are you from?

I hear
in the alley
through my open
window

Where are you from?

I hear
frantic Spanish
but damn it,
been in Los Angeles
ten years,
still haven't learned.

Stop resisting!

Shuffling of feet,
screams,
revving engines

Leave her alone!
Fucking pigs

I should
go out there,
stand and be
counted.
I know I should
but—
I look at the
clock—

Oh damn
I have a Zoom
and the
urge to believe
disengagement
is still
a choice.

Let go of my mom!

I click Join
and wonder if the
microphone
will pick her up
and I'll have to say
"sorry for the
noise"

#protocolpoems #poetry

I think a lot about
the End—the
nuclear variant.
The missiles have
rent-free silos
in my head.

The double flash
burning and blinding
anyone facing it,
then the heat
and wind
ripping flesh from bone,
tree from ground,
house from foundation.

The dead,
they say,
will be the lucky ones.
But right before
it all goes up
in the last moments
of a functioning world,
millions will open
the App
one last time
and post.

Civilization's
dying words
uploaded
to servers
soon to vanish.

One of these
will truly be
the Last Post,
the greatest-valued
timestamp,
no others to follow.

Lol, lmao

#protocolpoems

Strong systems
should be
resilient,
tolerant of
faults,
resistant to
failure.

But when they fail,
they fail with
grace,
gently,
as a falling leaf
alighting
on the ground.

I wonder sometimes
what it would mean
if strong men
should be
tolerant,
graceful,
gentle as a leaf.

#protocolpoems #poetry