Firewalls

He is egotistical in ways he cannot imagine,
blind in ways he cannot see;
his consumer spiritual poverty is complete,
for he lives in a world of scarcity
shaped by the beliefs of those he fancies
are better than himself (they'd quickly agree).
His fleeting power comes from clinging
to things he deigns to understand;
in mystery he withers; in puzzlement he sweats;
in amazement he faces untold catastrophe.
In fear and pain alone he trusts,
and in the hollow a Man would fill rests a boy
long dead, blue-lipped, clutching obsolete toys.
The answers to everything are in his grasp,
and he dares not fathom the ubiquity of answers
as the rhetoric of fear: and death he seeks,
though he knows it as pleasure, a passing parade
that heralds a final thrust, and a letting-go.
His white picket fences have long ago rotted;
tomorrow his firewall succumbs to the mildew.

Mucro Pondera Divinus, "Modern Man" (Feb 19, 2014)