The Shadow Maker
Our goal is to make it so there's as little friction as possible to having a social experience. – Mark Zuckerberg
is the fifth richest man in the world;
a harvester of pearls: our small talk
like algae-rich waters and tides –new births,
divorces, prizes our children acquire –
feeding and keeping the oysters alive.
is a master of illusion: figures in captioned
poses, screen and light; shadows that dance
on cave walls. Dramas that make us muse, lean
in, post notes like medieval glosses in the margins
of someone else’s domestic scenes; illuminators
to an epic chant, a rhapsody’s god-dream.
is the Ideal Prince, accepting the burden
of princedoms, glory, survival, to jettison distinctions:
good and depraved; monarch and something human
saved. Better to be loved and feared rather than
admired, or worse, revered. A lord who understands
the desire to acquire. A magician with two hands.
is a Philosopher King, able to discourse on goodness,
justice, corrupting pride; hold court on high ideas:
opinion, false truths, reality– a theory of forms
that casts our lives in cycles, fruit and fallow; sinners
redeemed. A god’s will altered; a cave master’s dream.
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Copyright © 2022 M. B. McLatchey. All rights reserved.
Published in Sequestrum, Issue 32, June 2022.
