The J.A Clause

(With thanks to Dr. Ibram Kendi)

If you do not want to be caught looping the rope over the thickest branch of the tree or flaying the soles of feet with cowskin or thorns; 

If you care about your brother or sister caught in the crosshairs, consider that the algorithm is a multiplier of violence.

Even your circumspect, righteous, or brief reflection is snatched into the larger hole.

So. Please. Do not post, publish, or pontificate into the algorithm’s void about the mess they regularly bring to someone’s door.

Remember that each missive builds into a tsunami wave that eventually crashes down over a single neck. The algorithm lives. It also kills. It turns the raving of a single garden-variety racist into a licking fire, and who holds the kerosene can?  It is time to wise up about the machine-worlds we inhabit and what they do. 

Jump the fence. 

Game the system. 

Burrow underneath these platforms, the wet dreams of billionaires and reach for someone’s flesh and blood hand, or eye; touch their elbow. 

If you want to “widen the conversation,” would you consider writing directly to a brother or sister  standing in shifting sand?  Send him your poem, your thinkpiece, your smart and snappy reaction to the facts of our life under these flags. 

If you cannot reach her, send it to another sibling-warrior-comrade-friend-colleague-enemy who will argue with you, laugh with you, hold you or cry with you.  Who was it who told us to say something real to someone real? 

If we care to, we can do this. 

Absent ourselves from the feeding frenzy, slip past the hounds braying for blood, 

and stumble into each other’s  arms.