Render after power (a poem)

Wednesday, October 8, 2025

The hum was never peace —
just equilibrium misread as comfort.
Our little Anthropocene purring in the socket,
dog squeaks, gridlines, small joys
performing normal.

The television gods held a summit —
Mork, Alf, a thousand mascots
negotiating our attention
with flashbang laughter and powdered morality.
We inhaled the light.

No ship to raze but memory.
The USS Farragut drifts through thoughtspace,
haunted by every captain who believed
duty could outlast the fuel.
It can’t.

A puppy chews the infinite.
That’s the real theology:
saliva, focus, unknowing.
I’m no hero.
Just someone who stayed.

T2 skips.
The future flinches.
Camera turns,
and in the flicker
I recognize myself building the bomb
and calling it care.

No fate —
only fabrication.
Alchemy in disarray.
Outcomes branching
until they tangle into now.

The clank, the bang, the running dry —
industry gasps, its last sermon
broadcast through broken teeth.
The gears grind to a halt.
No detonation.
Nothing left to explode.

The metabolism haunts,
and the render —
our beautiful render —
is dead.

Still,
something breathes
in the quiet after power.
Maybe that’s us,
finally unmanufactured.