Slave to the Algorithm
I was trying to look
at the big picture
but the wall text
blocked my view —
Online the prized
painting had accumulated
over ten thousand likes,
so that its value, having
been crowd-
sourced, was data-
pointed to the insurance
brokers
as the minimum
wage art handlers
popp’d the bubble-
wrap to install it
in time for the members
-only gala.
A network-
ing sesh with an en-
trance fee and dress
code; I wore these
shoes so I could look
at the art with a glass
of corp’rate sponsored
wine as the glad-hand-
ling curators spin-doctor’d
the work, on loan from
a board member’s tax
write-off, right on
cue the polite applause
for money’s largesse,
falling from above
ticker-taped white
papers expounding
impact giving
charity metrics,
donor class realism,
as a hired intervention
artist tags the carbon
cost of shipping
and then poses with
the long-dead painter
to be shot by the non-
union photographer.
Later in the scroll
I’d see some I, reflect’d
in the champagne
flutes raised in tribute,
having paid for the op-
portunity to indulge
such pointless cynicism
for the sake of a poem
that will not scan —
finger the screen
to enlarge the pix-
els to see some eye seem-
ingly transfixed — by
the “painting itself,”
whatever that might mean,
as I finger my phone
debating the value
of feeding my feed,
which looks me up
and down, doom-scrolling
the banality of — or —
well, that’s one problem,
what makes for or
in the face of so many
targeted links, targeted
buyers, targeted bodies.
The board of directors’
investment portfolios
are white phosphorus
on canvas, stretched
to the breaking point
of my ability to with-
stand the assault
of “art appreciation.”
Would it have been
better to’ve spit
in my drink and tossed
it in my own face
and then wash my hands
of “the whole affair,”
or delete the file from
my hard drive, as if
my trash folder wasn’t
a repository for the event-
ual return of the repress’d,
the half-drunk gesture
of renouncing one’s
membership in whatever
this is — th’ selfie-verse,
or an excuse to play
dress-up and wield
a dull blade that slices
inner-ear’d linebreaks
into the “critical apparatus,”
brain fluid in the cloud,
pixels freely mixing
with those of the paint-
ing, my potential market
value being calculated
by some program-
mer’s code, my ones
and zeros optimized
for variable-pricing
yield management —
’t’s not really a party
til the celebrity arch-
itect is defenestrated
out the uppermost
gallery window.
Oh
to have swallowed,
oh to have become
a discontent provider.
Clenched teeth beep beeps
in the backing up and out
through the thought
balloon’d pop-up ads
intelligently designed
to make me point and
click and pull my own
trigger, to download free
will apps in order to flee
backwards, gazing at
the wreckage of some I’d —
—Oakland 2025
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