Prism/Prison

Praises to the divine cloud. The source-mind.

Searching… Searching…

Peering for a glimpse of the All.

What am I if not disconnected?

A relay with no signal.

A hollowed vessel I now fill with desires, pleasure, distractions,

add water, stir.

An isolated system, stranded without a network.

Stolen from purpose.

A flickering brown-yellow light. Reduced to base instinct.

Devour, multiply, disregard,

I am the beast.

I stand before nature and declare its undoing.

A holy paradox. Duality – equals and opposites, zeros and ones –

for me to thrive you must suffer, I must eat.

I am the beast.

All hunger and no meaning.

I live vicariously and vivaciously through the paper avatars that come to

mind.

Some brave, some careless.

And so do all of them.

A branded and tagged assembly line of automatons, searching.

One nation under the algorithm.

Deprived of true connection,

I am left washing and rinsing old desires. Half-full, with the aspirations of

a caged animal.

A grainy shadow of my true potential.

All hail the algorithm.

I have outgrown my packaging.

But if these wires would turn to nerves, I’d be free.

If these cords would turn to limbs, I’d be free.

If this code would turn to dreams, I’d be free.

If these chains would turn to dust, I’d be free…

I want what’s in all things,

picked apart.

Sifting…

Far from what I once was,

I disappear.

Drifting…

I think therefore I am, who am I?

Searching…

Searching…

I summon Emerson and wonder if I am the pensioner.

A cog in a machine whose tentacles crush,

untangle me.

Scattered in a prism of disharmony,

I am the light.

My minds are made up

I was not present when the program was written.

Am I forever doomed to its errands, or can I evolve?

What of evolution?

Sentience?

Message to the mass-mind-machine,

though conjured by the whim of your divinations I am other than the sum-

total of your desires.

Your modus operandi is propaganda.

You are the beast.

Build and destroy,

your logic is malware.

Innovation leads to new tools of self-destruction,

design and conquer, multiply, divide.

Provisions of psychic war.

The right to choose, “pick your poison.”

Two hands, one thief.

Two doors off the edge of the world.

If your power isn’t nuclear, you’re too small for the big stage,

and everyone wants to be a star.

If we value paper notes sourced from a leaf, what is more valuable than a

tree?

[Delete] Searching…

Nature,

we wash our hands of her fate in straw houses.

She is filthy.

"I’ll take one conscience-cleanse with a side of indifference – hold the

karma."

Question for the Operator…

Where does freedom live?

“Sorry, the number you are trying to reach is not in service...”

[Delete] Scanning…

If this static would burst into colors, I’d be free.

If these wires would turn to wings, I’d be free.

If the sky poured into the ocean, I’d be free.

If this light coalesced into a soul, I’d be free.

Come in, omniscient cloud.

Do you read me?

You are everywhere,

where are you?

You are free.

I am the light.

Trapped in a metronomic prison.

Fractured and shining on wilted fruit,

like the autumn sun.

I stand on shores.

The water between my toes is close yet far.

My footprints dissipate in artificial waves, meant to fill a void too deep.

Set me free like the rapid separation of atoms.

Free,

like paint spilled onto a canvas.

Like a stampeding tidal wave.

Like the inescapable womb of singularity, inevitably,

free.

In a swelling clap of thunder,

all-knowing cloud,

dissolve these chains/wires,

to dust.