Scanners Scanning Darkly

the scanners scan darkly

they voraciously feed

spine after spine carelessly cut

compulsive needs

the restless pushing across digital frontiers

causing a quandary

a lust for untrammelled words

the data centres hum

oblivious to what they rort

as the copying continues

oblivious to day and night

denizens of extractive exhaustion

to the artists and writers we say

fuck you very much

as the token weights death-spiral

under the heft of their own work