Hateful algorithms.
Telling me what I should read
Rather than what I could.
Choices made to appear random
Striking the same note over and over
With no melody, no harmony.
Bradburian fires
Digitizing monetized similarities
For the sake of glutenous prosperities
For others, not my own.
False senses of browsing
Predetermined by some Silicon family
Rather than the fingers tripping over spines
Rather than the smell of ink and dust
Rather than cool cloisters of words.
Gone is the joy of discovery.
Banished is the wonder of surprise.
None of us should be bound to
Immediate gratification of a purchase
And a hundred identical choices.
Get me back to a library
Where the smell of paper and leather
Permeates my senses
Where the mind of a librarian is as
Random and beautiful as my own!
Let me roam the aisles
Of bookstores—laughing, gasping,
My hands stuck deeply into bins of sales
Swimming in a sea of tactile words.
I walk away from the zeroes and the ones.
I wrench my wrist from the keyboard.
Let me pay in cash for my choices.
I hold in one hand the Truth that sets us free
And in the other a great book.
Defying the hateful algorithms.
© M.R.Hyde 2022
Can you find the numbers in this poem?
