This poem was written after living in Silicon Valley for several years and observing the two-tiered system between small startups and the big tech giants.  I got irritated at the intellectual complacency bred in places like Google and Apple that have such strong socioeconomic barriers to entry, and don’t represent diverse genius and its less commercial enthusiasms.

For John

Not every smart person wants to work for Google,
Some of us are wicked.
We fly, cognitively speaking, under the economic radar of Commercializable
Genius
 
Cognitively creaking
Across the attic floorboards,
And falling down the drain pipe
Of What You Really Want To Hear
Across the field of Where You’ve Been Before
To the woods of Where Our Species
Needs To Go.
 
Our observations get loose in the house
We do not sit at the table, and mind our Wisecracks.
There are Insights In our pockets,
And small collections of What You Want To Forget are found at the bottom of our sock drawer, a bit moldy.
Sometimes Inconvenient Truth,
Tangles in our hair
Or Savagery, lingers at the corner of our mouth, because we have eaten it full and squirming.
 
We can’t sit still
Cognitively creeping
Down parental hallways
when we should be
Tucked in ideological coverlets.
Bad influences,
We pull off our shadows
Sew them to the furniture
And shake fairy dust on our neighbors.
 
Some children grow up to be pirates
And not all of them are boys
And not all of them wait
Until they are grown, to be piratical,
Cognitively sneaking
Firebrands, to light some small fires,
In the collective barn of straw thoughts…
And set ablaze what you Want to Be, leaving the ashes of
What You Actually Are.
 
We don’t usually plan to write Revolution on the walls.
It just happened when we were cognitively leaking
divine truth
And we pinch our brothers, annoyingly Awake
What is one to do with children like us?
Perhaps we are demon spawn
Weed spores.
Perhaps we are stray foundling Fey.
Who knows what we are, our clever words
Cognitively squeaking.
 
But not every smart person wants to work for Google.

Previously published at Medium.