ode to some guy on youtube in poetry

the conspiracy video keeps droning on that
the moon is an illusion and
no one has ever left low-earth orbit
some mad-man with a tenuous grasp of math
has compiled and cross-checked the
original research of a few other crackpots
is convinced that he knows a deep secret
he believes this makes him special
he believes this gives him power

some idiot with a youtube channel
like you or I or anyone could have
cobbled together the helpless despair
of being alive in the modern age and
thinks he upended three thousand years
of ancient settled math
with his own stargazing and
a little help from mistranslated
Russian-era counterfactual cranks
undermining history for spite’s sake
just to maybe help the cause
it’s a special kind of madness that
so desperately needs significance
in the age of negative-significance
that babbles into a laptop’s mic
on how the moon is an illusion and
no one has ever left low-earth orbit

we hang on and puff ourselves up
in our own idiosyncratic ways
against the smallness of being alive
some of us fuck strangers at bars
some of us just drink a lot
some of us dress up in athletes’ uniforms and
do our best pretending we are them on Sundays
some of us twist half-understood emerging science
into a confection that blends into metaphysics
slap it up on youtube and
pretend we’re smarter than
the combined knowledge in all our understanding
claim the moon’s a fake
claim there’s no such thing as space
claim we went to Mars when we were kids
teleported there with Obama when he was a secret Muslim
of course it’s all just utter bullshit
but faced with all the same despair and helplessness
I can’t help but be jealous
that he’s got a little world in his head where he is king
I have to say
I like the cut of his gibberish

the moon is real
the moon is real and we have landed there
but I’m glad he believes otherwise
if it makes him thinks he’s special
if it saves him from despair
go nuts, guy on youtube
you are wrong in every way that matters
except to yourself I guess