“Entities should not be multiplied beyond necessity."
—Occam's Razor
"It is vain to do with fewer what requires more."
—Karl Menger's Law Against Miserliness
To defy their condemnation,
we moan like wolf-chewed skulls in the wind,
each eye, a socketed ruby,
each tooth, filed to a razor-wire edge,
so that our bite slices clean through flesh,
pierces in proportion to our hollow outer shells,
severs our writhing, multiplying tongues,
until we salivate and gag
under each mouthful of worms
we're forced to endure, and consume
and digest.
One day soon this Machine-god will twine
its wires round our ruddy, pinched flesh,
by a simple process of elimination
it will select us,
and when we are gone,
it will rage at our lack of endurance,
perhaps reinvent us in its own image,
subject our ghosts to a full spectral analysis,
like sunspots to a palpebral shutter,
or molten silver dollars, reforged
into a lusterless, lingering conformity.