We live at the epic-enter
Patient zero in consumption’s AI revolution
Where excessive capital and extreme poverty
Dot the skylines and fill the gutters
The bookends of our taxonomy
Homo-Sapien, the wise-ape
Here all of our contradictions are undressed

Beauty and depravity
Within each symbiotic breath
In and out, out and in
The foggy, salty air of this place
Love’s holy name on our lips

Here
Where golden hills cradle
Piercing glass
Protected waters
And the first-fruits of the connected age

This place is where each new flashy screen is imagined and monetized
Follow the algorithms upstream and you’ll find it
The source of our great epidemic

Bent necks and drained adrenal glands
The pursuit of the digital novelty
Hearts, clicks, and likes
Behind each one a desperate search for meaning and identity
“Can anyone see me, do I matter?
A prayer of all history and all hearts

The bay and the redwoods paint a mirage of wholeness
But the bridges and the lights are not the promised land
Ones and zeros are not our home
Curated profiles are but empty calories

There was a time before our madness when we,
The we we’ve erased by destiny manifest,
Lived in melodic harmony with these lush shores
Like a nursing newborn and her mother’s magic

The seasons
Rain and dry`
Were our agenda

The neighborhood
Brother oak and sister marsh
Was our network

But those days are long gone

Now it’s the hum and hurry
Legions of the earbuded and laptop hooked
Avoiding the suffering and squalor below
Spinning the endless wheels of educations debt and technology’s promise

From dawn to dusk we fight and climb
Ignoring the depths of reality within

This place is stunning and stark
And if you’re not careful its spell will always entice
The promise of boom
In endless veins of gold and silicone

This is home
It’s all here
The bookends of humanity

Salvation is here too
And like the keys you lost but were in your hand the whole time
It’s right here

Breathe it in
Notice it
Let it out

Because we are patient zero
An epicenter of life
A contagion of love
An ocean of grace
Here

This is the gold rush beyond
The transcendent burst behind the bubble
The novelty that can’t be grammed or tagged
The promised land is here
Within