“of course we can”
a poem on big tech’s melian dialogue with the world, written by mil williams
where a valley was once one of tears
now it is just of usd
and when once a human interaction
was a kiss exchanged between you and me
or an embrace of the fullest
or a glance of the lightest
yet in its lightnesses powerfully bright
as people together used to … might
so nowadays
awful days
of inhuman tech the biggest of tech
where fucking the populace
is business model and rationale
and we are simply
as humans we once believed
now nothing more than movements
of send and receive
as the last mile defeats
not only the logistical amongst us
but also the emotional
and noble in instincts
where the big tables
where once the warriors and knights
of all things just and right
find those who now sit and tap
at its white cloths
reaching out long and wide
to be the most reprehensible of souls
to the extent that souls
they no longer have to hand
and instead of reaching out
to grasp the humanity of the truly social
they intervene rapaciously
and cruelly
and selfishly
and greedily as sinners
at the highest of dinners
as they deconstruct
what we the people are best at doing
into cogwheels of their machines
anything but clean and oiled
but rather trolled and seen vilely
and made to ensnare us all
into dependencies of the most violent
for silicon valley
is the partner of your nightmares
and silicon valley is that
which most terrifies and scares
into a submission of the switch
that lashes your back
as one more burden
which the wealthiest place
as a stone around your neck
because “feck! who knew?”
that tech was so base
and that the human race
could come to this
as slowly
little by little
it whittled away our capacity
to have the ability
to know what it is
to be anything but anti-social
and all in the pursuit
of that quickest route
to solving that unique
and vainglorious problem
all startup seeks only to solve:
how to invoice the new client
before the runway runs out
and without any doubt
our sales patter’s cover
shown to have been ultimately blown
is no more nor no brother
but other ways and other rays
like sunbeams on early saturday morns
when new ideas dawn
out of the night’s dusks
of husks and emptied shells
always exist
when the brain becomes
our primary discourse
and first resource of choice
for in the hostile misuse of all of that
which the valley promoted
and encouraged
so historically
and persuaded us of
so histrionically
there lies the solution indeed
because it’s true indeed it is
that in most problems out there
if we care to
and want enough
we will find the stuff
of golden days
oh golden days golden days
when out of
those awful obscured obscurities
burnished realities reappear fabulously
“don’t you know?” my dears
and my peers
and my soothsayers and seers
because whilst we destroy with evil tech
everything the planet
and our cultures
promoted
still we have the seeds of our renewal
in the culture and planet
so demoted
it’s time we stopped the valley forthwith
from turning us further
into mere extensions
of dark fathers
and families which aren’t
and tribes which demand loyalty
because flesh and blood
because just “no! no! no!”
and how so and how not
and how stupid brain clot
of the men mainly men
and the white mainly white
fashioners of trends
that will only ever
bend and break our spirits
if that is … we wish it
because tech is inevitable
but it’s nature never is
and information’s debatable
but only if we choose
to make it so unreliable
as a fast degenerating unintelligence
delivers the idiotic artifice
of money-grabbing intent
and money-grabbing internet
bent on selling our race
wholly down the river
which once we called the one of dreams
and now is no more
than coldly
algorithmically controlled
and delivered
streams of bits and bobs
and bots and bolt-ons of freemium
where chats and wind-ups
and trolling take-offs
destroy what could have been
and should have been seen
much before the warring russians
brought home to us all
that tech and trump and musk and vlad
are enemies of the states
that make up us all
and are something to be fought
nail and tooth
until forsooth their funeral palls
grace our front pages
announced and pre-visualised
as they will be
by remote eyes of stone
and overflying drone
in final humanitarian satisfaction:
justice of the natural sort
is sometimes as poetic as it gets
as quite rightly it should
in the neighbourhood
of extreme criminal activity
that is this bunch off awful men
which one day we shall finally see off
as we rid the whole planetary system
completely of i say
the greed that silicon valley
has seeded longitudinally
with wilful purpose
and cussed hate
because even so it’s now too late
to think of redemption for any of this lot
for the level of diabolical acts
that ultimately all have storied and plotted
experts as they were in narrative distractions
and in the mirrors and smoke
of bloated software propositions
as they prostituted so foolishly
their very corporate identities
in the chase to get there first
to the finishing-line of an untimely domination
that this dreadful globalisation
has become and has imposed over and over
and has imposed and has reviewed
and has slewed
like the sluices of a filthy sewer
spewing its flotsam of the very worst
this for me being
what big tech has learnt to send our way
as the silver platters not of fine food
but rather of saintly humans
discarded like rotten fruit
on the docks of international business
as money is all there is
and money is all there was
and money is all there ever will be
and whilst nothing is done
nothing will change
and where nothing changes
nothing transforms
but if just for once
we can dare our way through
to being a bit more
than fearful citizens
of oppressive states
where democracy arrived
far too late to the party
and just accept (yes let’s accept)
that even as we may not choose
the times we live
we can when all is said and done
choose the way we say and do
(can’t we?
of course we can …)
mil's page 