The Echo Chamber

Inside the echo chamber.

Shouting match with the walls.

Friends, a blithe coterie

singing merrily inward.

To and from each other.

To no other but themselves.

 

Go forth they say:

Collaborate. Create. Succeed.

Make Possible. Live Expansively.

Fund and Incorporate. Drive and

Innovate. Rise above.

Embrace uncertainty.

Seize. Attack ferociously.

Make it bleed. Sustain. Run lean.

 

Dreams and goals defined,

divined from the group.

Each a parrot,

doomed to repeat,

Not speak for one’s own.

 

The world, circumscribed

as if a fish’s bowl,

a hamster’s wheel,

a rat’s race through the labyrinth.

The end predetermined.

The story we’ve all heard before.

 

The bird overhead looks down

and laughs

at what this creature told himself,

that he listened

to the crowd, who said “run fast,

there will be cheese.”

 

How his friends cheered him on

as he runs, as he trained himself.

Became faster, wanted harder

and more.

Grew hungry, because he was told

it would give him an edge.

 

Game day: he’s running.

The clawing and the gnawing,

the crowd’s insistent cackling,

the urging of his group

as he runs around the circle,

hits home when, finished,

he is shocked to find there

nothing.

 

Birds overhead cawing to each other.

One, full and satisfied, shouts loudest.