No Simple Terminator

These poems are a contribution to the STSC Symposium, a monthly set-theme collaboration between STSC writers. The topic for this upcoming issue is Nostalgia.

WAGMI

WAGMI is a harsh mistress
You two have a booty-call relationship
And she’ll fuck you
When someone else yells her name

(SHAGMI)
Sucks, huh?

Don’t abuse her name
We’re all going to make it
But only when you yourself make room
For her to dwell in you and do the work

We make it individually, God willing
First and foremost
Forever and always
Heed not the selfish caller
Siren of the end times
Purveyor of (oc)cultism
And personal gains
Which despite their name
Place radical trust in someone else
Who is just as desperately self-absorbed
Stuck in trauma patterns
Of vaunted hyper-expectation
And using the new in old ways
Because numbers have been Eden for so long
Calm your tits
The muse works well beyond quanta

WAGMI responsibly, ser
Your plot is not so many line graphs
Buidl locally
And that piece of the quilt will be yours

A Life Online

Fallen (god)head
Otiose in diversion’s inertia
The downward spiral
To solipsism unseen

A life online, pixilated
Every avatar a dead-eyed reflection
A panopticon of hyperreal labor
Blockchain as laugh track

Data accretion at critical mass
The head numbly explodes
More than portfolio and printer
A stifled human soul

No Simple Terminator

Upon the decentering of the godhead
We expected the false idol to also have a face
And that we might recognize it
Fight it
Put it in its place

But it’s no simple Terminator
Ossific, oligarchic sin
The dark hydra mirrors us
Our many heads, faces
The patchwork potentials therein

People change with the changes
Each must likewise unmoor
Some warp, others sink
Embracing chosen statues
The later to wash ashore

Tectonic, the cultural plate
The virtual seas a-froth
Identity fractured
Lives’ tires kicked
A revivifying broth

It is so if you see it as such
Cognizant of future and past
Sans reflexive attachment
But sensitive presence
Wherewith we are to last

The Unfolding Now

Those who sicken at systems of late
Misplace sentiment should they back-step
Into the mire of time, ahead or behind
And try to escape the unfolding now

Memories rust, break in your hands
When you try to relive them outside your heart
Memory rusts, breaks at your hands
When you try to live outside of your heart

The metaverse will greet you but never meet you
The past you have met and said your goodbyes
Let ego lie fallow, longings and attractions pass
Now, may your brave soul grapple and thrive