The Electron's Guide of Life

Two hundred years ago, suffering was more personal.
Mind to hand, the hand guided the whip.
Letters arrived with terrible ink marks
Men hanged, or billed.

Arriving on paper,
Oppression, inconvenience and irritation
Can be crumpled from a plane of aggravation
Into a light sphere of irrelevance
Can be rent into snowflake pieces,
Can be burned into ash
And painted on the head.

Today, without the merest courtesy of materiality,
I was pushed around by a particular set of
Brusque, self-satisfied electrons,
Flinging themselves uninvited
Onto a bright rectangle
I paid for.

I grow to resent these negative charges.