luddite

on throwing stones and making ripples

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The singularity is here.

A black hole opens beneath the center of everything and I lose years of my life to machine-produced hallucinations. My eyes spin in their sockets, tracing walls of binary code. The “real” collapsed years ago — simulation reigns. Collective psychosis written into law.

Monopoly men fight for the privilege to spy on us and rob us blind. I usually fall for their tricks; I plug into the wall as a plea to connect but my cries fracture in the noise, can anyone hear me? The shareholders have never been happier. I am a soft, stupid animal with blurred edges. I lovingly stroke my glass screen

alone.

I’m afraid of the smoke on the horizon and what we are becoming but there’s a dull and constant buzzing in my skull and if I listen hard enough I can hear cicadas screaming in the static.

Look at me.

Nose down, thumbs busy, blue light reflected in pupils. I am background noise in my mortal body. What’s so wrong with being flesh and bone? I can crush that black-mirror phantom-limb with my fist.

Be free. We are human

briefly.

I am alive and so are you — reach out and touch. Mouth to mouth, hot dog breath, feet bare and dirty,

laughing.

We’re outside, leaving our mark on street signs and sidewalks, adding planks to the bridge connecting me to the world and everyone. I am vibrating with the hot breath of summer, flying, screeching.

I want to toss a stone into the still, troubled water and watch the joyous ripple.

Don’t you?

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