one tick
two tick
green tick
blue tick
an endless stream
of tricks and tocks
5-star holidays and bubbling stocks
those bits and bytes
those coins and Lites
souring all my dopamine;
a cocaine-snorting Charlie Sheen,
or Kim Kardashian’s brand new bum
our Princess, set to be a Mum.

your clicks are sold to highest bid
they push a platform on your kid
to spin roulette and red-rag bulls
and all them other evil pulls
dreamt up in labs by twisted mind
who bear no feeling for mankind,
who’ve hacked the soul,
found nothing there
but a bunch of wires
and a bottomless tear
and into this deep pit they’ve plunged
and off our weaknesses they have sponged
until the sun comes up one day
and with a yell, I hope we’ll say
these Likes we’re living
while our brains you’re sieving;
we no longer want a part
and so we’ll start to pick apart
this spider’s web that we have strung
those threads upon which we hung
will fall like rags around our feet
that Insta like, that outraged Tweet,
will become again what they always were,
mere ones and zeros, a server’s whirr.