DK DK Poet Rhyme

The Hypnotist's Ledger

They paint desire on a billboard sky,
plant hunger where no hunger grew,
whisper you are less until you buy
the wholeness they invented too.

The worker rises, makes the thing,
his hands the origin of the gain,
then buys it back, a offering
to feed the loop that built his chain.

Screens flicker like a slow-cast spell,
each jingle laced with borrowed need,
the common man, both source and well,
tilled twice to make another feed.

Profit floats to a distant shelf,
counted where the maker's not,
while he, who built it with himself,
owns nothing but the wanting bought.

Satisfaction, packaged, sold,
returns to hands that never labored,
the dream is his, the coin is cold,
and someone else's ledger's favored.

Wake, they say but not too far,
just far enough to reach the door,
where want is manufactured, a star
pointing always back to more.

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Alison A Smith September 7, 2026 at 3:57 AM A powerful, tightly structured critique of manufactured desire and the cruel circularity of labour, consumption, and profit. The consistent quatrains and measured rhyme give it the steady, inescapable rhythm of the very “loop” it condemns, while images such as the “billboard sky,” “slow-cast spell,” and “Hypnotist’s Ledger” make its economic argument vivid, eerie, and human.