Reposting Rumi

If you can repost Rumi to refashion your identity
Yet not lose your sense of self-respect,
If you can apprehend your true economic value,
while everyone around you does likewise;
If you can capture it all in a consumable narrative
Or put your name to causes worthy of it,
Or be located in the right place at the right time,
And yet not post too much, or look too eager:

If you can sincerely monetize your innermost passions;
If you can utilize every click, and optimize every like;
If you can offset your plagiarism with your cleverness
And never allow your ego to acknowledge either;
If you can withstand others’ cynicism of globalisation
While bearing their nationalistic and utopian folly,
Or watch as others steal URLs with your name on it
And brace yourself for the inevitable rebrand:

If you can skim quite happily along the surface of life
And never acknowledge the nihilistic void ahead,
If you can view your neighbour as an economic actor
And see their failures as theirs, and theirs alone;
If you can equate market freedom, with human freedom,
And never think to question the status quo
Or deal in what could be’s, or lofty contingencies,
Don’t acknowledge such idealistic tripe:

If you can know all this, and still rise to assert yourself,
Or affirm your own personhood in a world devoid of it;
If you can blog for the sake of your own actualisation,
And recognize your own wit and wisdom to boot;
If you can set all those agitated minds demanding redress
at ease, with catchy slogans, and echoed clichés;
Yours is the neoliberal world and all forces therein,
And – what’s more – you’ll be soulless, my son!