May 9, 2025

Nay But We Would Have a King

after 1 Samuel 8, a liturgy for the years of our spectacular undoing

And in those days,
the people stood in the square.
And every face was lifted toward the screen.
And every mouth was bright with the taste of metals.
And every hand remembered how to thwack.

And they said:
Give us a king.
That we may be as the others.
Give us someone tall.
Make us look good from space.

And the elders said:
You were not made for this.
You were shaped for dust,
not wired for display.
You were brought up
out of bondage to serve
the all-King, Yahweh.

But their voices
were drowned out
by the clamour
of foreign tailoring.

And the people said:
Give us a king.
Let him be branded.
Let him be inevitable.
Let him deliver us
from ambiguity.

And so the king came—
with hands of newborn gavels,
with eyes preloaded with sons,
with a head crowned in data.

He made the sons useful.
Taught them how to behave.
Taught them to be his footstool.
To wait and want the waiting.

Then he gave the flags
someone to hold them.
He spun daughters of dissent
into quiet silk
fit for wedding seasons.

He rewrote the sacred
into background sound.
He converted tomorrow
into a loyalty program.

And the vineyards bore
plastic fruits.
And the plastic fruit
stored for food.
And the histories
reconsidered themselves.
And even their dreams
indexed and monetized,
woke up inside the machine.

And they wept.
Not for what was taken,
but for how exquisitely
it was taken.

Still they cry:
Let us be fought over.
Let us be judged
so long as the judging is televised.
Let us be ruled
so long as the ruling is spectacular.
Let us dine upon
the delectable failure of man.