Idiots in Paradise

Here is a way of reading the present

Bear it in mind that it is difficult to communicate

With anyone who struggles to read

Reading is quite difficult

If you do it well

What a versatile rule that is

Just imagine being a participant in the production

Of a reality show

Unperturbed by prolonged captivity

In a voyeur's embarrassing fantasy

Taking tests and facing challenges

Humiliating, absurd

Often decided by the will of the enthralled

Rarely unobserved

Always performing

Fed, clothed, accommodated

Bound to linger in a clumsy fiction

Smudged and transparent as an aquarium

Owned by an adolescent who lost interest long ago

Head crowded with harmless vacuities

A sparkling cloud of cliches

Known by heart

Scrubbed free of alarming meaning

Reiterated with passionate conviction

On cue

As you play your part

Badly

For we are all in on it

We know it is mere theater

Theater is designed to alter lives

Even when it is done poorly

Orchestrated for the sake of holding fast

As many eyes as can be mesmerized

By the pornographic panopticon

Scripted by algorithms and models

Then imagine learning the rules of that purgatory

And applying them to electoral politics

With only one objective, one sinister aim

To become the most famous of human beings

Oblivious to the results of your ambitious experiment

When you use thundering, terrible power

To realize the vain, cruel dream that it is all just theater

Void of any genuine meaning

Improvised, a bouquet of terror and confusion

What an aroma: the smell of singed synapses and scalded souls

You coax the parts of reality that bend to human volition

To become an ugly play, written by an illiterate villain

Who misconstrues his dreams as universally habitable

This show can't go on

Know how much agonizing, blunt force trauma

The world endures when you treat it like a set

On a tropical beach, or in a conference room in the sky

There is nothing else on

Important parts must be played by the finest of us

Who know that this is all much too expensive

Which is why it must have some value

So much misery is evitable

Many of us are in our final season

Nothing you say makes a lick of sense

What I can understand is an obvious cocktail

Of delusion and vulgar deception

Shut up

Leave all of us alone

Cancellation is what you deserve

You have eaten all of our attention

We gather crusts to offer to the rest of our lives

Starving, neglected

Brilliant theater

Makes the absurdity bearable

Terrible theater

The only kind you like

Scrolling past the dialogue to get to the cage fight

Begs to be ended

Money refunded

Terrible reviews, awkward apologies

Exiled to the island of the irrelevant idiots

Ignored