Salome Agbaroji

Global capitalism was genius until it became negligent, leaving the unfortunate to suffer without the means for life.

Biased science elevated one people over the last.

But with differentiation came racism and caste, littering our world with non-compostable isms.

I say to its text and images, you're brilliant, but you aren't the first generation to forge something out of seemingly nothing.

Haven't you seen my generation, the DIYers and binary defiers?

We too extract wisdom from the earth's mouth like a flower.

or a landmine.

Sure, drive our cars, but never our movements, never our blood and boned passions.

You can't replace the place of the people, I say to the people.

The displaced children without homes do not cry mechanical tears about a simulated hunger induced by virtual war.

The viruses they suffer from are not the zeros and ones in your devices, cured by simple software reset.

If only the world had such a button.

We've got our heads so far up in the cloud, we forget that the ground exists.

New prompt, is this modernity?

Marveling at machines that can read and write when currently 700 million adults are illiterate?

New prompt, is this innovation?

Chipped by click workers in dark, dank rooms without proper compensation?

The future we fear is not the sci-fi, cyborg, AI uprising that sets the world aflame.

No, the true dystopia is the today we make.

When humans watch the world burn, still with the power to save it.