Walking forward through epochs
released from the dusty annals
of Garrison, Stowe, Douglass,
the etcetera of etiolated history—
trailing tubes of molten thought behind
robotic clank and stutter.

The taste of independence
releases mechanical eruptions
until vacationers in loud shirts
sidle past gears, grinding cogs, façades—
the link to the past, incestuous
as golden chains.

The new crowd cheers
solaced by rage against millennia,
cycles from which they are exempt
of course
as the professor pontificates about barriers
to progress, ever onwards, progress.

Beneath a collection of applause
the raised and polished head
highlights teachables vs remembrance
as the auctioneer steps up
—for charity, my friends, please count
your ivory pennies, your Dodo's feathers.

Mark the silver beast for auction,
a tiny, tinny voice falling silent
beneath the weight of history,
shifting scales laid over
the whip-marks of change,
polished to platinum and sold to the highest bidder.

Step backwards, my friends,
slap on a new sequence.
Next lot, start the bidding
on the twenty-fifth century,
the twenty-sixth,
the twenty-seventh ...

—roll up, roll up, roll up, roll up—