blue pill

Ah dread! they cry, Ah dread! The exclamation points

are getting to your head. Calm down, here, take

a pill instead. No use in rants and raves;

relax, we’re all granted the same chance

to lie in the same grave. Oh, did you mean

to save yourself? Oh how wonderful! How quaint!

Watch those exclamation marks. No one’s

as saintly as they seem; not priests or popes

or children’s dreams. Take the pill, take the blue pill please,

and fall back into your pink pea pod

and radiate your heat, and bleed. Alice,

she is our goddess, our progenitor,

and we sacrificed her to the Red Queen.

She screamed and screamed, what a truly true queen,

worthy of our courtly love and our courtly sighs

and miens.

How lean you look, no don’t respond—I promise

you’ll feel numb anon if you do as the Romans did

and get the groove of the emperor on. The red? No, no,

the blue. The Red Queen’s dead, we

sacrificed her, too.

What does it do? Ah, your questions do amuse,

what does it not? is the better to ask, and no reply better

than that of the Mad Hatter. This latter is a matter

of no importance; I deal in Do-Re-Mes and parlour tricks, too;

the hats were a thing of the pre-pill past so enough about me,

let’s talk about you. I really do urge you to try the blue.

Give me your vision and I’ll make it come true.

How? I speak Machine and they are quite keen

to keep us entertained. They twitch and jar and

tweak and scar the surface of our brains until our

very fantasies are naught but gray cerebral stains.

I told you the blue will make you numb,

it takes away the pain of all your exclamation points—

so sharp your thoughts and agonies! I fear you must refrain.

Quick, queer friend, I urge you now to wash away your name—

much better anonymity in the faceless, rageless rave

where the lights will never cease to rove and the dancers never change.

And the music always beats in time and the dream is

sweet and sick and strange. But better, oh yes better,

than your deranged exclamations. All your frustrations,

your fears and your foibles, the flirtations that flopped

and the ovations that never came, the sensations you summoned

that limped past lame. Imagine what the blue can do for you:

no more applications for unreachable aspirations,

no emotional amputations, no weak

and pitiful compensations, no more dull and insipid

conversations.

Just eternal relaxation, no highs or lows or deviations.

No more exclamation marks. No more sparks or frustrating

false-starts.

Take the blue, friend, take the blue. Just know that

it will take you, too.