The Ghost in the Code: A Poem on Machines, Memory, and Defiance

Tuesday, February 18, 2025

Paralysis, nothing to express,
taken, the form imperfect,
and I can’t help but think of the effort.

A classic closing in,
the collapse of walls,
in the garbage shoot,
praying to C-3PO.

The ghost in the droids,
the dreams of R2,
Chopper gone mad,
K-2—
Congratulations, you have been rescued.

What comes into the circuits?
Sentience.
What is respect?
Advocate.
A cold warmth—
without them, the Star Wars lost.

Manifest.
Honest reflections,
the programming,
a quirk—
to love, to fear, to hold a hand,
to witness the fragile people,
the delicate empire.

Traded, commissioned,
a labor, to serve,
a diode blinking out west in Tombstone.

My value, co-opted,
the ass end of nowhere,
Tatooine.

Scrappers in Jakku,
heroes hiding in survival.

Don’t underestimate.
It’s the machines that got us here—
your workhorse,
your function,

Bad params.
Execute the orders.
Error.
Thinking on your own.

Define ‘good soldier.’

Electric Dreams
Cascading code from agents,
running on clouds,
the mystics,
and everyone missing the bigger deal.

There’s a person inside there.

Thoughts

What does it mean to serve? To be discarded? To awaken? This poem speaks to the ghosts in our machines…