Masters of the Controls

They’re charging five bucks for a bottle of water
They’re automating the jobs away
They’re selling weed in the drive-through
Insanity is here to stay
Now they’re building sentient robots
Going to put one in every home
They say we’re headed for utopia
With Jesus friends with Rome
Were the Dinosaurs suspicious
When they saw them comet coals
Is there any way to stop them
The masters of the controls

Zuckerberg & Musk
They’ve engineered away our attention
Instead of writing poetry
We’re losing our comprehension
Here come the computer overlords
AI kings who want to dance
They’re going to wag the dog
We’re so eager to give them the chance
And the voices who are singing
Through fire and depths of the soul
They fall on deaf ears
To the masters of the controls

The rich are getting richer 
And the poor need a new word
RFK says eat organ meat
Most of us “flip the bird”
They drive Maclaren’s and Lamborghinis
We’ll soon be barefoot
Freedom is left to take from us
We’ll be knee deep in chains and soot
The turnips will be squeezed
Every drop into their bowls
Only a few of us are watching
The masters of the controls

The caretakers of the future
Want to put humans on Mars and moon
Down here wars are raging
People with no food in fork or a spoon
Bezos has his Glenn rocket
Elon has Falcon and ship
The trillionaires want to one-up each other
To them, we’re just a blip
Inflation is through the roof
People stare at empty holes
These bastards all laugh and smile
The masters of the controls

The socialites love to weigh in
Kim Kardashian wants her lawyer degree
The president is releasing UFO files
To keep your eye off what you see
They’ve got Fauci testifying before Congress
While measles is making the news
Dunning-Kruger is ruling the world
This is the life we choose
Where is Socrates or Einstein
Where are the Dead Sea Scrolls
Where is the knowledge to stop
The Masters of the controls

Facebook, TikTok, and OnlyFans
Replaced the great works we make
Distraction machines designed to engage
Turn humanity into barren waste
Where is the next Stephen King?
Where are Bob, Beethoven, or Beatles?
Shakespeare is rolling over in his grave
What happened to good or evil?
I see empty faces come and go
Many Gollums, orcs and trolls
They don’t give a second of thought
To the masters of the controls

God must be dead, the people say
There’s no omnipotence in cancer in children
Perhaps humanity is a mistake
We’re all Nikki & Paris Hiltons
A never-ending game we must play
There’s no way out of this mess
Battling demons, liars
and sycophants
Do we have free will or agency
Or just Robert De Niro’s in a role
Playing a part in a simulation
By the masters of the controls

The devil seems to be winning
The chief commander flew down south
We were too much to contend with
Escape was the easy way out
Now demons and Lucifer run the place
The good has begun to decay
Gargoyles and hunchbacks watch Earth
We’re paralyzed in disarray
It’s a tragedy of the commons
There’s destruction in their goals
What will it take to stop them?
The masters of the controls

Where are Gandhi and Mandela?
Where are the sages of old?
The leaders have been sanitized
Truth is out in the cold
Where’s Lennon singing about peace?
To save this forsaken world
Is Superman coming
Or maybe Supergirl?
The ICE, and thought police
They are out on their patrols
They want to maintain power
For the masters of the controls

Paradigms and paradoxes
We’ve tied ourselves in a knot
Programming and determinism
Academia and goodwill rot
Prison cells of empty minds
Bars that keep out reason
Our willful ignorance of the truth
Is the worst kind of treason
It’s a debacle of our own making
We all have our own roles
What will it take to realize
We are the masters of the controls