Battered Siphon

dearest children,

do you want the red or the blue sippy cup?

a fork or a spoon to eat up

every bitter bit of

the nasty dinner you don't want?

the donkey or the elephant?

charlatans and spoons

each, empty vessels delivering identical things,

human tools born to fill a void, to feed

their goal to appeal to their home team and then some;

the middle and their extreme

and from this emerges: an illusion of choice cheaply lulling

our worst instincts of control and tribalism

--a deep schism adorned with a sticker

'I VOTED!'

so who are we to cast both ballots and blame?

we are units to the funnel that puts them at the top

a broken upward filter and evidently brittle

as those who reach the pinnacle

are overtly an exaggeration;

a representation of our own humanity

and in our mediocre modernity

these ugly gargoyles piss on us from above

we chiseled them, our own hideousness our muse

our own corruption, the tools we used

behold, our creations

there's no absolution to what's predestined;

we make the bed they Lie in