The Gates

So many are so keen to seal the gates

To keep the others out, and us warm and safe

Many of us, at any rate--provided that we have a decent place to stay warm and safe in

You can be warm, and relatively safe, in the stinking sarcophagus of a portable toilet in the Arizona desert at noon, after all

Some kinds of warmth and safety are so decadent and filigreed in their opulence, those who roll ecstatically on their sheets with thread counts only artificial intelligence could count resent ever having to leave home

Working from home is lush and languid if you have a safe and comfortable home, and easy access to all of the resources you need to sustain both conditions

If your home is spartan, if ominous gossip about rodents and insects swarms through the halls, if you cannot always rely upon a twisted tap to allow a pure, clean gusher of God's finest, bespoke beverage to cascade into a glass, or the drain, just for show

Or if the heat seems to be guessing much of the time rather than giving you a straight answer

Working from home means you are working two jobs at once: keeping your home from worrying you too much, and your "real" job

But if you're having a good time with your air fryer and your exotic cat in a little palace in the clean, azure sky

If you never worry about paying a bill, or keeping creditors at bay, to whom you have secretly considered selling precious things, if not such carnal favors as you have to offer, just to be rid of the whole balance at a go

It seems natural to want to keep it to yourself

To be convinced that the unworthy covet what you have with greedy fingers

So many are so keen to seal the gates

That seldom goes well

Consider Prince Prospero in his castellated abbey, taught humility by the Red Death

Plagues do tend to throw class differences into sharp relief, like black characters on a stark, white screen

Some can afford to text the chef and have the bounty hand delivered

By a starving courier who is risking disease and gasping death

To hear you complain that the soup is cold and your favorite mustard is missing from the bag

Then watch as you excoriate her online and halve her deliveries, as she wonders if her child's medicine will last the week

We, the great unwashed, should be suspicious of the gated communities

The mockery, the insults, the lies decorated with space age industrial light and magic

Demagogues and tyrants treat their subjects like gullible children

Governed by their appetites and soothed by flattering hyperbole

You are the pure, the virtuous, the good

It is in your blood, your soil, your folkways and traditions

The loose and tattered garment of traditions you call culture

Makes you distinct, remarkable--people are saying that they've never seen anything like it

Pause for a moment of quiet reflection

It's the foreigner, the stranger, the refugee, the survivor of your foreign adventures

For all of your woes, they are to blame, and must be repelled by our big, strong, beautiful gates

If demagogues and tyrants can be clearly seen saying the same things to frothing throngs all over the planet, in wardrobe suited to many a different epoch or ethos, you've got to see the work, the gimmick, the stale routine

Don't buy it, even if it's free

So many are so keen to seal the gates

So that we can busy ourselves training and maintaining the machines

So that they can keep the interesting jobs to themselves, while we toil

So exhausted and miserable and incredulous

So sure that the show won't justify the long, slow line in the rain

So disappointed when the food tastes bland and is in short supply, and the games and toys have grown tedious and facile, and the dominant paradigm sits on your taste while it insults your intelligence

So desperate to go on a long, turquoise wave of a vacation; so sure that vacations simply cannot be taken by ordinary people anymore

Especially with the war, or the special operation, or the surgical strike, or the liberation, or the regime change--so many aliases for the same criminal--going on, though it never started, and no one can recall why

Scrolls used to contain beautiful wisdom

They have become glowing slot machines that vomit slop

Salty, fatty, weirdly addictive slop

Sweet enough to rot a god's teeth

Sufficient to keep us distracted

Where some are warm and safe

Behind the gates