The electrodes were
pulled,
The thing woke, shaking
off its death-trance,
Got up, looked around.
We had a monster.
It is ours.
We created it
Out of provincialism,
Greed
And our fear of
everything.
It swam up out of the
depths of our
Not taking ourselves
seriously,
Evolved out of our
choosing war every time.
It grew fat in the
nursery of our cultivated indifference,
Descended when we lost
our appetite for principles.
It started by devouring
our dreams.
It licked its shark teeth
When we let the angry
neighbor convert us.
When we let the self-righteous
Do all the praying,
Its shadow crossed the
land.
When we gave up on each
other,
When we gave up on the
land,
That was when we felt its
breath on our necks.
When we stopped voting
our conscience
And invested all of our naivete
in a virtual future,
That was when we summoned
it
To lurch forward.
And when we abandoned the
hope of the moment,
That was when it knew it
had a home!
You know, that old place
That we used to call home?
Where the door now stands
Wide open to the wind and
rain,
Where the windows rattle
When the fracking
earthquakes shake the land?
Where the paint peels
On the empty farm stand?
Our monster sits on the
leaning porch
Just like a human
Waiting for the world to
end,
Except smiling
Like a damn politician.
