Queue, Anon

Soon, celestial spheres will form a bright line

Sorting themselves, single file

Such signs and portents are said to be semantically dense

Legible and enigmatic

Clear and obscure

Marking momentous moments

Auguring apocalypse

Or neglected laundry

Or the right moment to fix your courage to the sticky place

And ask that demur barista to read a bad poem

In hopes that she will sit patiently through a long explanation

Of its coy, pretentious brevity

Perhaps, when planets play these parts

Resolve their differences long enough to hang

Out of our grasp, but within our reach

They show that when the heavens are aligned

The earth is seething with implausible chaos

Familiarity is on holiday

Insatiable greed is a virtue

Vanity and pride confirm rude health

Plagiarism is the most fashionable of literary modes

We do chores for machines

The noses of the multitude are pressed to the thick window

While their bread becomes fodder for smirking, oligarchical selfies

In an exclusive restaurant in orbit

Criminals become kings

Ignorance is less awkward than knowledge

Gracious hosts are suckers

Whining, gluttonous ingratitude

Is the hip and sophisticated mark of a modern guest

Scripture shrinks to suit the SMS

Mendaciloquence is sexier than plodding honesty

Platitudes about wellness are all of the medicine most can afford

We are anxious about our depression and depressed by our anxiety

We wear out the name of trauma, applying it indiscriminately

To everything from a broken printer to a storming of the capitol

Which our eyes lied about

As they seem increasingly to do

While sinister salutes

Masquerade as charming clumsiness

While thoughtless robots do the fact checking

And large language models write the eulogies

Of organic minds

The solar system, sublimely synchronized

Proves a planetary parody

Macrocosm mocking microcosm

Paeans to the police

Prepare the way for the release

Of their deranged assailants

Reality is television

Television is dead

I stream, you stream, we all stream while we scream

Nothing is worth what it costs

And prices climb toward the heavenly queue

Silent, suggestive

Impossible and real

Mere accident

Coincidence

Quickly dismissed as a hoax

A conspiracy

A sign from them

Such an elastic, vacuous pronoun

That we

Are out of line