A Gal Darn Miracle (a poem)

Friday, March 7, 2025

At the keys, a heaving chest,
a breathing being pecks away
with its digits at the module—
a console, an interface,
a platform for me.

On display:
the profile and the wizards,
the machine learning
as I become lesser.

Economics rolling over,
wouldn’t it be nice
if we all benefited?

Class warfare.
Access to augmented intelligence.
Agencies.
Good Samaritan.
In the employ—
an abstracted, large apparatus,
working well beyond
the purview of another human.

The crafted. The systemic.
More plausible
with the proper tools.

I have done it again,
worried myself,
reeling at the keys, tilted,
on the axis,
wobbling like a drunkard
in the street,
under the weight of me—
the dread I carry.

And sometimes,
in a moment of weakness,
it all comes out as insanity,
a clinical edge.

I’m over it.

Hold me up, babe.
I want to walk across the threshold
one more time,
with you in my arms—
that smile—
to stop that moment,
to travel elsewhere in time,
the slow motion,
red-light time,
the distilled snap,
the shot in the arm,
the puncture,
the injection,
the meds,
the chemistry of this fraud
we tolerate.

In ourselves, even.

All conflicted,
infectious blind ethos
bent on chaos,
causing distress.

The entire republic,
all of its citizens,
under duress.

A family splintered,
no Join, or Die would work today.

Presumptuous, of course.
What do I know?

The cliché,
the layers of disinfo,
the charade
and its deployed system array.

The apparatus—
a weaponized intelligence.
But you knew that.

It’s been like this
since the beginning.