The fish’s tongue,
Its vessels severed,
Rots and falls away
And Cymothoa exigua
Grafts itself in place.
It wriggles one way
Taking note
It wobbles up and down
It makes a dance that seems like speech
And becomes its master’s sound
And when the school of fish consumes
Exigua-serving lies
They can see the world’s truth
With Cymothoa eyes
I wonder, before mass media,
How God named Light
In the king’s English.
Ecclesiastic hierarchy, sure,
But two men cannot see the same Sun.
And when the printing press came,
How far away was mass literacy?
How long until the masses can read the news?
Martin Luther put each man in front of his own Bible.
How could one book be read by two men?
Today’s stories come from the networks.
Corporate hierarchies, sure,
But we don’t have to read.
The internet knows things for us,
But we can’t read that.
Sophistry and Solipsism in the New Millennium 