Ever Ledger (a poem)

Friday, January 30, 2026

The thoughts are wild and scattered,
the tap of glass,
light and a diode
flitting across a cold imagination.

A trail of tracers,
form and shade,
a shadow blob—
an overactive assumption.

Windows, doors, locks.
Secure inside,
cradling a weapon,
protecting myself from everyone.

What a way to be,
doing what I can
to keep
and still be.

Syllables, scratches, marks
to make the weather.
This economy works
by sacrifice.

Gobble gobble—
human capital,
the soul’s force,
labor.
What happens
when the overlords
don’t need us
anymore.

Wealth slaps the poor,
then blames them
for having no more.

I’m in a portal,
ticking boxes,
making strings that say
I’m a sprite alive,
protestant in posture
and still kickin.

The age of a dynamic,
ever-present ledger.

I’m here to say
we are not capturing it all—
the record keeps currency,
not the cost.

Since the first contained fire,
we have been sprites—
alive,
screaming from inside
the machines we make,
our essence counted by ledgers
that never record the cost.