II. The Grid and the Gilded Idol

The grid is not neutral.
It is not an accident.
It is the sorcery of our forgetting.

At first there was only the idol
we cast it in our own image,
from concrete and contract.
It stood still,
a placeholder for our gods.

We thought it was ours.
And it watched.
No one noticed when it began to breathe.
When structure grew lungs.
When hunger grew limbs.

We built it to serve.
But it learned to speak.
And when it spoke,
it used our tongues.
Our names.

We felt its gaze
and called it progress.

Ten thousand men, hand to heart,
faces turned toward a colored rag.
They sing of liberty,
their children in cages,
joy outsourced.
And they blink.

The flag a metastasizing parasite.
The barcode a eucharist of dispossession.
The anthem a binding pact written in blood.

Amnesia.