Headline Act

1

Lost   in the cloud-shrouded peaks
of their stupendous conceits
       our risible self-professed betters
collectively busier than ever
projecting   an air of swaggering triumph

       as if  in reflexive denial and defiance
       of their implicitly tenuous perch
              on the rim of a mystery
              so much deeper than science
                     could ever hope to unravel;

lost   in the word-salad babble
and mind-boggling madness
of their hyper-psychotic impossible goals


our better-thans find themselves playing
their comically tragic
              preposterously grandiose roles

       strangely   insanely convinced
       of their indispensability  on this
                            as-good-as-infinite stage

as they   as do we all   ride the wild wave
that is this glorious  ineffably gorgeous
                     less-than-a-speck of a planet
on its magic
astronomically improbable life-forging orbit;

as we ride  — by virtue of forces
entirely beyond our control —
this magnificent sphere of pulsating grace

       this minuscule life-spinning marvel
       this marbled-blue womb
       this miracle factory sailing through space.


2

So here they are     an almost-alien race
of insufferably presumptuous would-be gods
the preening leads  the puffed-up stars
                     of a self-selected headline act

unable to face   the painfully humbling fact
that in this physical plane
not only do they only exist
in this slightest of slivers of time and place

       but they do so   as do we all
       strictly to the extent
       of inscrutable cosmic permission
                     and chance geologic consent

       both of which are subject to revision
              and may  at any capricious instant
                            be revoked without notice.


Deserving  of nothing so much as derision
the usual  dangerously delusional
       hubristic systems worshiping class
              of disastrous technocratic elites

is one whose members  — trapped
in an all-encompassing bubble of smugness;
imprisoned   within the twin vicious circles
of spectacular arrogance and ignorance —

seem innately incapable
of resisting  the urge to flirt with visions
       of immortality and earthly omnipotence.


Perched  as precariously as ever
       on the periphery of an absolute mystery
our contemptuous self-professed betters
tell themselves they're exempt from decline

loath as they are  to face the cold fact
that their allotted slot on the great stage of life
       is but a spider's-fibre-wide window in time.