Tantalum - Thanks always returns

“Old prisoners are your true conservatives; they only demand that the order around them remain exactly the same.”
~ Stephen Vincent Benét, “The Blood of the Martyrs” from Thirteen O’Clock (1937)

It’s named for someone tormented
     for all eternity
And cherished everywhere
     for its unmatched capacity
To charge us all
     with global ads & connectivity,
As child labor puts it in our hands

To tantalize by showing figures
     shapelier than we
Can ever have, and faces we can
     never touch, just see
Promoting merchandise
     that’s out of reach of budgets we —
Who say this metal comes from shithole lands

Yet won’t admit we’re racist —
     have had opportunity
To blow on charges it presents
     as our prosperity
Since we can seem not as we are
     but as we long to be
Free from a debt that endlessly expands.

February 2018

Thanks always returns

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