Death by information

A Story by Alex Vandool

You see them here, there, and everywhere

Still spouting

Shouting

Pushing

Posing

Opining

Theorizing

Don't call them attention seekers

Who?

Rest easy - they're scientists

And journalists

Virologists

Astrophysicists

Amateur quantum mechanics

Judgmental atheists

Experts

Nexperts

Know nothing

But know it well

They'll tell you this and that

Agenda driven

Usually

And learned off marks

Or dull sparks

Dogma

Duds

But sometimes sheer entitlement

To say their piece

Mistype some tale

Demand your time

All views matter

Bend over

Hoary narcissism

Provoke the lens

The worst thing's the excess story

It spreads grotesquely

Gloating

Proud

These data shovellers dig no shame

You're buried in it

More dimensions than we're shown

Contaminating minds

That once were sure light

Elevated, succinct, wordless

Through the other side

Along came wires and cables

Nerds with numbers

Zero all the way to one

Obsessed with sharing

Distracting factoids

In legalese and deathtone phrase

Jargon, pics and buzzwords taking over

New torture pointed pointlessness

Books and pages to infinity

Trees and silicon harvest-slaughtered

Amassed like jerk billionaire wealth

I tried to stall it

Om have mercy

But horror memory of ours and others

Persists surreally sleep and waking

What would Dalí do?

What would Nietszche say?

But even these exclusive mages

Weren't they spelling info-novels

Complex-polluting

Telling world more than we should know?

That's the problem these thirty years or so

For some this time's the worst of all

We have heard, read and thought of all foul eras

Acts and lies, taboos discarded

We live it in our plagued imagination

The saddest days and years of every type of martyr

As we're stretched out, compassion borne

We break and get up

Fall asunder

We search for some way to survive

Distract ourselves

From information overload

And overdose

Where to throw our harried attention?

Which way away from codes of message?

Right back to where we started

Here, there, and every place

Diversion leads us left to madness

Vulgarity

Perplexity

Nihilistic metaphysicality

And

Metaphorically

Jack in Jill's

Out and inbox

Flapping in your face