Machine Made Bread

Patricia Walsh

Cork

Ireland

May we ever celebrate our road to perdition
glancing skywards at our fate outlined,
focus on our limits, smashing the roadblock
through which we struggle to enter in.

We’ve bettered ourselves, with want of reason,
sound bytes still call the doomed masses,
‘Three quarters of the world never made a phone call’,
slight, sated, our brains are our temples.

If the power is out, where are the candles?
If the server is down, how will we live?
Sit back and be still for at least five minutes,
service will be resumed, although found wanting.

Eating terabytes to keep up with the pace,
memory, though sorrowful, remains outside,
inside the Neanderthal mind, we shoot survival,
hunting and gathering too de rigueur to work.

Getting old and senile. The bad cops sweetly sing
barricade knowledge to a click and drag
from our homes onto the street. Condoning
implicit violence, by assignation. Glory be!

Give us this day our daily bread. Manufactured
with sleight of buttons, passed in time.
Processed with uniformity, blandly produced
to our homogenous taste, a programme worth watching.

Bio: Patricia was born and raised in the small parish of Mourneabbey, Mallow, County Cork in the Republic of Ireland. Her previous publications include a book of poetry titled Continuity Errors, and a novel, The Quest for Lost Eire, both published in 2014. She has also been published in a number of journals.