How can people be so honest with each other
And so dishonest with themselves
Our artificial renditions rarely rise to this occasion
The dramaturg’s frantic pleading cannot obscure the fact
That the scene always has a telos
As it always tends in a particular direction
And this very tendentiousness is what we want
We want it all to add up more or less
To gratify roughly what we expect
Why would you ever seek out the unedited transcript
Even the deeply conflicted one
Of an ordinary conversation with the ordinary function
Of mundane interaction
Dad’s description for example of the vicious traffic jam
While he speeds unimpeded through the green lights
Lying more committedly to Dad than to Mom and the kids
Who no doubt harbor their suspicions
Of course some wide-eyed sampler from the avant-garde
Might do just that to showcase its own perversity
Fob off a surreptitious recording as a measure of everyday life
But a critical mass was achieved a while back
When not only did horror rise to unimaginable dimension
But the transmission especially of images
Became unimaginably pervasive
And nobody gives a shit any more about the perversity of a hipster
The transgressions of a servant
In the livery of Ray-Bans sculpted beard and special hat
The twentieth century is so dead
But the horror persists
And we tell ourselves that it does not
That some savior religious political cultural economic or technological
Has redeemed us
And new horrors accumulate
And in every room of every dwelling
People cannot refrain from expressing
All their strenuous efforts to the contrary notwithstanding
Their frustration their boredom their anguish their disdain and their dread
Despite their halfhearted wish to deceive their nearest and dearest
To convince them that everything’s fine
And yet they persevere in the fool’s errand of attempting
To deceive themselves
And miracle of the age
They often succeed