FIRESIDE CHAT

FIRESIDE CHAT

you thought it would be
a great idea, a jaunty
self – promotion
to give
us a fireside chat

be we all
got incinerated

before which
you told us a great joke
which you were sure
we would love,
respond with ratings-
boosting love
whose punchline just
so happened to
be that
we were all now at war,
update, quick correcton:
that we were
all dead in the war

nevertheless, we loved it,
your aporoval rating
simply shot through
the roof,
the recently-remodelled
trillion dollar roof and ceiling

whereupon
it went ballistic, fully hypersonic,
caught us terminally ill-
prepared as it
did shoot us
in the foot, and
running to you for
not in our price range, not
in any price range medical cover

you droned on at liberty
focusing on the extremity of doubt
written across the touch-screen
of all our citizen faces

swearing it was all AI,
we had been duped by
the extremely accurate powers
of falsification
generated in some
secret hostile media bunker
by pretty terrible
election-
stealing, fake
narrative AI

being dead, however,
we were by no means able
to respond to
or comment on the veracity of that

burnt to death
by your fireside chat