We are the New World’s 13th generation,
first citizens of the Next World:

	whiners, malcontents, slackers, 
	bitching at the taste of boot;
	blind-stepping teledonnas,
	our avatars more human than human.

	Dark little rooms,
	catatonic terminal glow.

We’re vagabonds, rummaging through the machinery of 
our parents’ high towers,
ruthless tribes of marionettes
jacked in the trance, 
the cult of computerized dance,
a spasm of youth sizing up the desperation of middle age:

	slit the Master’s throat or waste away.

Here is the ruin left to us:

	purple haze from the factories
	acid rain and CFCs
	we make more money, but we don’t know why
	‘scuse me while we fuck the sky

We are the age of insubstantiation,
a generation of digital bells,
loose change on the sidewalk.

Our days are loops,
our nights tight spirals,

and if the virtual is 
			even better than the real thing

it’s only because the real thing is so goddamned empty.

“X” originally appeared in Wilmington Blues, March-April 2004.