If I Had Horns

I would not fall like lightning.
I would not roar, or rage war,
Nor would I announce my arrival with a trumpet. 
There would be no thunder.

I would come dressed in convenience.
I would file down my horns.
I would replace my pitchfork with touch screens.
I would not be a tyrant. I would not be a lord.
But instead, merely a simple vendor. 
I would not be beast, but a broker of dopamine.

My subjects would have spines 
curled into the shapes of chairs. 
I would not whisper into their ears.
but instead, into their algorithms.

Their children would forget how to 
look each other in the eyes.
For their eyes would disappear behind their thumbs. 
Lovers would be too self conscious to remember the smell of
their spouses skin. 
Mothers would forget how to sing to their babies,
for they will have a screen to do it for them.

I can hear them now. 
They weep, not from pain, but boredom,
and I see them scroll to keep it quiet. 
I would not have to steal their souls,
for those would be outsourced.
Fragmented across a thousand timelines,
posted, polished and perfected.
Only to be devoured, not by me, but by
strangers who also feel nothing at all.

I would not chain them.
God has given them the choice to choose Him.
I would give them endless choices,
and each one would lead nowhere,
and each one would be empty.

They could be anything,
so they will become nothing at all.
I would give them all the voices of the world,
and they would stop listening to any of them. 
I would erase the Sabbath, not with fire,
but instead with overtime. 

I would rewrite ambition and turn calluses to content. 
I would turn sweat to metrics and grit to gig. 
I would laugh then. 
And I would have my jubilee in ones and zeroes. 

And they would be my choir of dead eyes bathed in blue light. 
There would be no need for war.
There would be no need for blood.
I would simply make it so they never stopped looking.
They would never stopped scrolling 
and they would never find what they were looking for.

They have not given up their idols.
No, they have only changed its color.
A gold cow, for a blue light in a small black box.
And because their necks are too crooked 
from looking down at the idol in their hands,
They will forget how to look up to the one who lives above.

And under the guise of freedom,
I would enslave them. 
I would entertain them 
until they were numb with plenty.
And the greatest part of it all would be 
they would look out from their jail 
and they would not even know they were there.
Nor would they know I had ever existed.