THE SECOND SECOND COMING

Scrolling and scrolling in the tightening feed
The user cannot see the algorithm;
Truth falls apart; the signal cannot hold;
Mere outrage floods the world,
The deepfake tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of reason is deleted;
The wise retreat to silence, while the trolls
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Second Coming’s near.
The Second Second Coming! Just as thought takes form
A vast meme out of Cloud Consciousness
Flickers on every screen: somewhere in data-streams
A shape with bot-like logic and a human face,
A gaze optimized, pitiless as code,
Is parsing its slow judgments, while all around it
Spin ghosts of the indignant cancelled voices.
The buffer circle hangs—but now I know
That thirty years of restless, wired sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a notification,
And what slick beast, its hour come round at last,
Logs in from Silicon to be reborn?