Teleprompter

Ubiquitous,
but unseen
by us,
not by them.

Speech lines fed, read,
good, and dead.

Text channeled, narrowed,
and harrowed.

Eyes look forward,
not down.
Looking at us.
But no:
aimed at it.

Eyes on their screen
Not their eyes on our eyes.
Their eyes on their camera, then
From our screen to our eyes,
Not their eyes on our eyes, screen-less.
The unreturned look.

Personality staged, arranged,
contrived, contained,
willingly savaged
by artificial articulation,
simulated cerebration.

The oracular eclipsed by
the mechanical (muse).

Amused, outraged,
I move on to
Book, discussion,
book,
lecture, book, and plain speech.
unprompted, but not unbidden.


Teleprompter,
Video redactor of reality,
fatally artificial.
Hidden persuader
of its bemused benefactors.

Commanding presence,
detached insistence
that we serve homeless words
aimed at our happy and hapless souls.

Screen-less
would be speech-less
--a word and world less prompted,
but not unbidden.

Illusion
with precision,
a concise incision,
cutting deep and wide,
video born
across land and sea
that every knee
might bow.