MYTHOS AT COMMENCEMENT

by David Anson Lee

Eric Schmidt stood at the stage
like someone introducing age.
He praised A.I.’s unfolding reign.
The graduates booed him just the same.

“You are the future,” Schmidt proclaimed.
The students looked professionally ashamed.
“Machines will free you for new dreams!”
A voice cried out, “They killed internships.”

The billionaires call this “transition,”
their favorite synonym for incision.
At Citadel, whole teams were gone:
outperformed between dusk and dawn.

At Stanford now the freshmen pray
their essays still sound human-made.
The honor code grows frail and thin
when every prompt begins with Begin.

The parents clap. The provost beams.
The deans keep monetizing dreams.
Meanwhile Mythos scans the wire
like scripture crossed with hellfire.

It reads the grid for sport alone,
finds ancient flaws in backbone stone;
then Anthropic, careful, grave,
explains restriction keeps us safe.

Translation: banks and states may peek
while everyone refreshes LinkedIn weekly.
The students boo because they know
the future doesn’t need payroll.

And somewhere in refrigerated light
the servers bloom all through the night,
teaching silicon to replace
the species that designed its face.

David Anson Lee is a physician, philosopher, and poet from Texas whose work explores medicine, technology, public life, and cultural memory. His poems have appeared in journals including Right Hand Pointing, Eunoia Review, Ink Sweat & Tears, and Braided Way.

MAHA GOSPEL, OUTBREAK SEASON EDITION

by David Anson Lee

 

Caricature by DonkeyHotey at Pinterest.

Make America Healthy Again, he says
as if health were a slogan, not weather.

He holds food like contested scripture:
dyes, preservatives, words too long to trust.

“Return to purity,” he says,
while measles redraws old maps
without permission or press release.

Hospitals hum in reluctant chorus.
Pharmacies speak in minor key.
A mother searches immunity
and finds ten thousand prophets.

Even vitamins argue theology now.

He calls it restoration:
as if history were a diet plan
instead of a returning headline
with better lighting each time.

David Anson Lee is a physician, philosopher, and poet whose work explores intersections of medicine, memory, and public life. His poems have appeared in journals including Right Hand Pointing, Eunoia Review, Ink Sweat & Tears, and others. He is based in Texas.