(you Are Here) Post-Material Lotophagi Poem by Gene van Troyer

If you're reading this, it probably applies, a simple message
blinking on a map page: You Are Here. It doesn't matter where.
You realize you're just a digit kept alive in some accounting
scheme. The quantum zing that's singing in your nerves
is just a data stream that's being cooked in actuarial books
on the top floors. You were tested for it as a youngster,
and tested through the years that flow into the numbered sea
of now. You're right. You hear them all singing that song.

Count up! Count up! Hey Mister Tally Man tally us our numbers,
downtime comes and we won't go home! So Mister Tally Man
count us up those numbers! Tell us all where they're going to go.

You are absolutely right. It's there on every page that links
into the junction of that throbbing dot. You are here.
You are the dot. You feel the links connected to the ebb
and flow of your electron blood, each cell a promissory page.
If things out there get rough, log in. You're wanted in this
place, you'll have some fun, the only trouble comes
when trying to decide. If you're reading this, you must apply
or you are out of here. Click this link to join our numbers.

You're really living now. The post-modern, post-material,
post-everything age. You find a sexy other avatar, and wow!
When in silks your lover goes, how sweet the liquefaction
of those ersatz clothes as bits and bytes cascade
across the virtual skin; and in the torpor of the stats arrayed
in data matrices, the breathy sighs of programmed satisfaction.
Nothing beats that tingle as it zooms throughout the intranet
of your nerves. Plugged in! So good! You're ravenous for more.

Sign up, log in, any time is right, up-time comes
and they want to stay on. Hey Mister Tally Man tally up
their numbers, we all know that they won't go home.

You are here and feel the joy, yet something drags at you,
an anchor on a line left uncut. It hooks on something solid
and goes taut. You flop on the boney slats of a bone-made
boat that plies your crimson river. The Boatman holds the tiller
as he points: you see them there, the Lotus Eaters plugged
and wired on one shore, all other links are cut. 'I tally up
their pennies. Since you're reading this, it can't apply.'
He drops you on the other shore. 'You are here. Go home.'