Kleptocurrency

Cryptocurrency or
kleptocurrency?
Like a casino with its
poker chips stacked against you,
it will exchange real money for
1’s and 0’s.
Money that steals itself;
what a 21st century concept.
Out of sight
out of mind
out of wallet.
It is easy to pickpocket
wealth absorbed into the
E-ether, pulling it out of
thin air
like a magician pulling a
bit-coin from behind your ear.
It is like lightning
in the Cloud,
flashing brightly
and then gone,
but not even thundering out
(even if you are thunderstruck
by the bankruptcy).
How ironic that currency
made of info-dumps
and that can never really change hands
or be lost in the couch
or dropped on the filthy street
should be so dirty
as it zips about from one wire
to the next.
It is the ponzi scheme
dirtier than the pond scum
in Wall Street’s wishing well.
Might as well buy virtual “real” e-state
and see how many tenants
pay for the rent.
I am sure your avatar will eat well
even as you starve.
What a brazen blackmarket
operating in the light of day.
And what good are undercover detectives
investigating
when everyone is undercover?
These criminals
and these victims:
indistinguishable.
True, we are all complicit in the fraud
that is currency,
for every currency is a magic trick
and we are coerced into believing it
until, like a cult growing toward religion,
illusion enslaves sense
and delusion overmasters reason—
yet,
this is something much newer,
more genuine in its fraud.
Electronic currency exists
as current upon the digital byways.
Like your digital girlfriend
in a dating simulator,
it’s real insomuch
as others never ask too many questions
or ask to meet her:
“Trust me. You guys would get along
great together.” It is the same as
“Trust me. It’s as good as in the bank.”
Electronic I.O.U.’s between strangers
divided by time zones and continents.
It seems an experiment
in the Thomas Theorem
to see how much
“real” currency can be purchased
from digital counterfeits:
anything thought to be e-real
is real in its e-consequences.