The Web

Nearsighted hunchbacks dimly pass the time

Watching the victories and failures of

Liquid crystal denizens. Watching all

Across the meaningless distances spanned

By gold filaments and fiber optics.

Distances are eliminated while

Voids greater and lasting fill their spaces.

The crisscrossing wires wrap around the globe

And trap the earthbound daughters and sons of

Spiders who spun too much web to escape.

As if leaving was on their minds – eyes

That cannot see through flimsy manmade screens

Cannot dream of higher and further things.

So hunching to their screens they keep their watch

As all around them the void thickens in

Its emptiness. Rampant webs of  purblind

Spinners indiscriminately catch prey.

Whether bright-eyed youth or graying matrons,

Intellectual or professional,

All the quick will become mere spectators

Within the spreading demon-weave dragnets.

The quick and the dead will be difficult

To distinguish in the encompassing

Torpor. “As it should be!” says our fey foe,

“For my victory is achieved when great

And small children of men do naught but lie.”