if

you,
slave to inertia,
plod on
a noisy, cumbersome exercise

but somewhere is made ready
a secret legion
with visions
of crystal towers
cities of justice
and above all
alive inside
with the possibility of myth
the epic
once all the purveyors of painless outrage
have spent their tedious little words
they
the paragons
these
will be left
standing
integrity riveted to their iron frames
the superstructure of that which they have chosen,
an immutable certainty,
heroic in their steadfastness

the last great meaning

Others

They have their drumbeats
and we, our own
autotuned and synthesized
meticulously focus-grouped
slipped through panel after panel
of experts on cool
and soccer mom surrogates
each bass tone
scientifically balanced
anodized
and vulcanized
we drain the life from it through plastic tubes
and pipe in a patented Vivacity Substitute(TM)
until it has all the sheen and luster of genuine music
with half the fat
and this stale, lame thing
we hold up as a shield
against the hard, sharp edges of their bone knives