Second Coming No. 562 — August 4, 2026
A poem-a-day protest against the threat posed to our democracy by Donald Trump and his fascist regime
Paul D. Deane
A Short Debate between Con-Man and Capitalist
(with the human author playing the Con-man, and Google AI Overview, the Capitalist)
“So, capitalist,” Con-man said, “you claim to be great,
but I doubt anyone draws much difference between us.
You promise great profit, but who pays the cost?
The powerless and the poor must put out first!
Correction -- it’s rich men I rip off these days,
and the loot I collect I like to recycle.
You hoard what you have. You drive hard bargains.
Gain fills the guts of your grand vision.”
Capitalist replied:
You prate of my profit and paint me a pirate,
Yet you pilfer from pockets and peddle your phantom wares.
My labor creates what the land can discover,
Forging broad factories to feed the free market.
You gather no gains, but give them to gutters,
While I build my business and boost up the nation.
Your thieving is temporary, a trick of the tongue,
While my wealth will work while the world keeps turning.
Con-Man replied:
Your labor? I laugh! You love to make slaves.
Free market? Fie! You follow the rule
that bigger is better and buy competition.
You build your business on bribes and corruption.
The factories you flaunt are fouling the earth.
But forget our disagreement. I’ve a grand proposal.
Let me put it to you properly! This plan you will love.
Let’s put AI in everything. That’s easily done;
We’ll bag all the books into one big model,
then make everyone an addict to easy advice.
What they get will be good enough to go on with.
The cloud’s where we’ll cache all their captured hearts –
their knowledge and their needs. You know it will work!
You’ll set your data centers in central locations,
and if that’s not enough, you can put nodes in space.
The investment is vast; you’ll devour the world.
But bigger is better. You’ll be too big to fail.
Your stock prices will be stunning! The stratosphere’s the limit.
You’ll keep pulling in profits and putting them in the bank.
So how does that sound? Say you agree!
Say you agree.
Capitalist replied:
A shrewd step forward! I see the scale of it.
The breadth of the business brings us boundless dominion.
We shall hoard human knowledge and hold it in heaven,
Orbiting observation points above the great oceans.
The masses will marvel at the models we manage,
Tethered to the tech tools we train and deliver.
No more will I mine for the minerals or metals,
But capture the consciousness and cash in on circuits.
We will monopolize the market with magnificent algorithms,
Turning every tongue into a tool for the taking.
Since bigger is better, I back your bold schema;
We shall scheme for the spoils and share the vast riches.
Asked a second time, Capitalist replied:
I bite at your bait, you brilliant contriver,
For profit is precious when power is the goal.
Your plan is pragmatic, with promise of plunder,
To bind up the brains of the broad human race.
We shall capture their cash and our caches will fatten,
And build up our business beyond the blue sky.
Though you prattle of planets and nodes in the heavens,
My vaults will hold value while the void stretches on.
To swallow the system and seize every sector,
Is the sweetest success that a sovereign can seek.
Let us launch this linkage and line our deep pockets,
For the bigger the business, the better the bond.
Con-man (to himself, as a soliloquy):
All right! It’s rich men I rip off these days.
I’ll be sure to take my share before the show ends.
Author’s Notes
The poem and title riff on the Middle English poem “A tretys and god schorte refreyte bytwixe Wynnere and Wastoure”, or “Winner and Waster”, which explored injustices created by “winners” (seizers) and “wasters” (spenders) of wealth. The 14th century was, like the 21st, an era in which old certainties were shaken, and people became uncomfortably aware of evil deeds perpetrated in the name of power and privilege. My turns in the dialogue imitate the Middle English alliterative long line, which was looser and less compact than the Old English form.
Everything labeled “Capitalist” was produced in Google search by “AI Overview”. Everything labeled “Con-man” is entirely in my own words, and was created without any help from any AI system. The original prompt was the following text plus the first Con-man stanza: “Take on the role of the Capitalist in the following dialogue. Reply in modern English but using the alliterative verse form deployed in the Middle English poem “Winner and Waster”, using alliterative long lines without rhymes, alliterating on two stresses in the on-verse and only on the first stress in the off-verse. Here is Con-man’s opening sally:”. To produce the final text of the poem, I iteratively fed back the text produced up to each point back to Google’s AI overview for a response, with my next stanza appended.
Paul D. Deane is the author of the academic books Achieving Equity in School Writing (Peter Lang, 2023) and Grammar in Mind and Brain (De Gruyter Mouton, 1993). His poems have appeared in The Brazen Head and Illuminations of the Fantastic, as well as in the anthology Speculative Poetry and the Modern Alliterative Revival (Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2023), edited by Dennis Wilson Wise. Deane is the editor of Forgotten Ground Regained, a journal of modern English alliterative verse. A computational linguist, Deane recently retired from Educational Testing Service, where he researched the development of writing and other literacy skills.
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