The Updated Truth (a poem)

Saturday, March 1, 2025

Tropes on tropes, the ropes of strings,
strung along a single algorithm,
spun-up APIs, open doors, old windows,
apples and Raspberry Pi.

Narratives float and rise,
lift, ratings, lips, and eyes.
The sensory shifts, the empire twists—
it changes your story
when you know the inner components as persons.

Nothing is clean and simple,
to pretend with a chainsaw
and be no more than a butcher.

Watch it burn and giggle—
the id and the ego,
superimposed on a rubber stamp of a nuclear arsenal.

The projections, the narrations,
how awake can a sensory array be?
The sensitivity of a trackpad, the click,
the double, the spin and pinch,
twist and glitch,
electric pulse processed,
ones and zeros, looping through fiber,
an end, a portal,
recomputed, displayed on the corresponding terminal.

The living document—
data wraps, envelopes, comprises,
on lease, next version, outmoded.
Here is the updated truth.

The amended algo—
to corral, build a firewall, contain,
this global threat, reduction protocol,
to us and no-more mode.

Into the internet ghettos,
virtual communities,
strung on the end of a string.

Camps and prisons, people hauling,
the business of moving bodies,
held indefinitely.

Suspended in time and space,
frozen histories,
plucked from family.

Poemwerful tools for the elite,
to pick and poke,
command and conquer
the citizens.

Combine and master—
glitched command, a system error,
or just the endless loop
of control.

:: KERNEL PANIC ::
FATAL EXCEPTION IN LINE 0
NO MORE MEMORY LEFT TO ALLOCATE
ABORT DISPLAY
TERMINATE CONNECTION

signal lost