Tourist—
O creature of two lives:
one moment
on the dry land
of boredom,
the next
in the swamp
of reels.
Now on Instagram,
now beneath X.
You flee
your pitiful emptiness—
yet in your suitcase
you carry nothing
but it—piece by piece
In your selfies
the only symmetry
is
the graveyard
of history
behind you,
and the face
of an ape.
You do not taste culture—
you lick its image.
You do not experience—
you wrap it
and post it.
You do not find yourself—
you gift-wrap
and export yourself.
O tourist
addicted to tech,
O colonizer
of the twenty-first century.
Your slaves—
the suffering poor,
the countless homeless
asleep
in silent streets,
the migrants
scarred
by exile.
Your legions—
like-worshipping beggars,
zombie followers
without gods.
Your patrons—
the endless lords
of capitalism,
raised high
upon the rotting bones
of Nazism,
hiding
behind the mask
of fascism.
What remains
after you—
the rise
of Airbnb,
the climb
of rent,
the fading
of culture,
and the digital
disfigurement
of the human.
From Poems of Madness