Closed Circuit Monocle Blues

When we all crowd up to peer through this lens
Mitigated and exacerbated by love- and fear-trends
The distorted picture we get doesn't even pretend
To believe in us so why should we bother to lend
This view the benefit of the doubt instead just shout
From your rooftops we're alive in this continuum
Take your views, chops, all that jive and shove it
Monstrous hypocrisy is the main thing we covet
What's left of us does not have the right to discriminate
Neither side recognizes a distinction to differentiate
The interlacing complexity of our evolving system's
Variables manifests too fast and there are too many to list 'em
So go ahead and hashtag your complaints in capital letters
So that your screed reaches blind eyes and falls on deaf ears
Into the closed-circuit echo chamber amassing lost files
For years on the world wide web just a massive recycle bin
That never gets emptied and the one single difference
Between internet digital trash and real life city dumpsters
Is no one goes diving for anything of worth deleted online
Because Facebook's just a vanity mirror maze carousel
Where we throw our voice into a chorus of ghosts
Our reflections engaged in endless porous discussions
Are really just the preliminary stages and repercussions
Of our mortal skins shedding one dead cell at a time
Building our individual polished and framed cenotaphs
To hang on the wailing walls of those who survive us
Every time we log on to this expansive social utility network
We're adding the pre-mortem makeup to display the memory
Of our corpses stacked up like cordwood to not be forgotten
It's not that this endeavor is reprehensible or rotten so much
As it has become a profitable mainstream business to cotton
To the cult of shareholders and corporate programmers
Subsuming the rest of us into their pentagon of tombs
The burgeoning cloud has plenty of chambers and rooms
To accommodate all who would stumble and fall
Into their feathery, winsome and tempting subterfuge
So what, in effect, are we to do while the whole world
Seems to be falling apart or unraveling at the seams?
Just stop and think it's been this way from the outset
Only now the rose tinted glasses are fiber optic implants
And we're living our nightmares as well as our dreams.