Ted Zero @ Gmail.Com
Those numbers are indicative,
steal away whatever individuality
we might have imagined:
Ted zero, me 37, Ben two thousand and twenty five.
Trouble is, they’re using up the positive numbers,
and we’ll soon
be moving into a negative schematic, the truly imaginary,
like the square root of minus one.
That’s the way of our society, congeries of conglomerations,
the unacceptability of the anonymous.
First comes the ostensible, the innocuous,
like ID‘s for voting; only ( of course ) to be certain you’re not an alien.
Now, just to make an inquiry over the phone,
or the internet,
their questions: in which hospital
was your mother born, the name of your fifth grade schoolteacher?
Seem to go on forever,
like a game of Trivial Pursuits, a veritable Wikipedia.
Gives the feeling of being harassed,
like being strip-searched by the police.
Next they’ll be branding us.
We’ll be like cows lined up for the slaughter,
never knowing, except for the bloody mess and the bellows,
If this is the first, or the last, line of our lives