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.

Published in Sequestrum, Issue 32, June 2022.