Creator / imaginer: Dabbler in art, literature and sound.
Humanity has placed creativity in stasis,
Imagination lost to technological prostration,
The slow deprogramming of individualism,
The slow programming of conformity,
A world where colour is no longer financially viable,
Home is a small safe white featureless existence,
Where we live laugh love,
Like a programmed flock of electric sheep,
A hive mind sharing one unspoken mantra,
Obey.
I awoke at 4:00am with a worried mind,
Thinking about the future churns my guts,
I’m concerned I won’t have the strength I need,
To deal with the level of change required,
With age I have less will, I need less mental ‘weight’,
Navigating some days now is a real challenge,
I simply don’t have the energy or drive for much,
I feel constantly fatigued and yet I cannot sleep,
I’m running out of time, resources and loved ones,
Work seems over demanding with load increasing,
My mind keeps shutting down when I need it,
Like it has a constantly tripping surge protector,
But I don’t know how much of this is real,
And how much is my mind fabricating woe,
But it’s constantly on my mind, and it is exhausting,
Who knows if I will ever truly rest.
Evolution is being witnessed by the blind,
We are transforming, digitising our souls,
We cast shadows without any light,
Told answers to questions we never learned,
We are the child holding a gun to our heads,
Unable to differentiate toy from weapon.
Today I feel completely overwhelmed,
Everything seems to have just come to a stop,
Like my brain has been writing data beyond its allocation,
I can’t think straight, I can’t process, my memory is lagging,
I’m trying to provide myself comfort in any way I can,
There were too many questions at once today, too many requests,
Like I had too many tabs open and loading on a slow connection,
The sound was so loud, overlapping sounds, laughter, voices,
All competing for volume, it was just too much,
I had to leave the city, I had to run, I had to retreat,
I needed calm, to find a little solace to get some work done,
I must do something to slow down this overclocked brain,
I’m back home in the country now and I have logged back in,
There are no sounds except birds and a distant garbage truck,
I may have to close my eyes for a moment and reboot,
I’m optimising my settings, trying to save them so I can focus,
But I fear my storage is also at capacity.
She’s almost invisible now, as if spun from finest gossamer,
Haunting, somehow trapped within these walls,
Like an apparition lost in her own cold distance,
I see a sadness in her eyes that I cannot repair,
And feel a burgeoning sense of dread, fed by her despair.
The threat is invisible, silent, and constant,
There is no escape, no running, and nowhere to hide,
The signal permeates every system, every cell,
It’s a new technological pandemic
The killer is digital and already within you.
Nobody can disconnect, and very soon,
All existence will be erased.
The early morning rain falls like sheets of shattered glass,
Down on the street, the forming puddles reflect the dark sky,
Vehicles pass by like hissing serpents, the occupants barely awake,
Concrete building frontages shine with a watery veneer,
Dripping facades provide walkways shelter before disappearing up into the clouds,
Advertisements flicker with colourful brilliance, LED billboards illuminate laneways,
They cut through the rain and darkness, clashing with decrepit orange streetlights,
A bridge spans a freeway tunnel, and the headlights of hundreds queue to gain access,
A helicopter buzzes overhead, preparing to land at a nearby riverbank pad,
Sirens wail in the distance, the world is waking up,
Time to unplug, disconnect from my terminal and put my mind to sleep,
I power down, remove my headset, rub my tired eyes and stretch,
Now, while the chaos of the waking world ensues, I will rest,
Only to return by night, like some kind of digital vampire.
She came to me through starlight,
Through immaculate dancing violet light,
I still see her eyes when I close mine,
I feel the warmth of her embrace,
Her heart is a great constellation of stars,
Her lifeforce shines across the galaxy,
Tonight, I will close my eyes and dream,
Of my beautiful Andromeda.
We are hardwired to provide maximum resolution,
Once there were eyes, now cameras are the solution,
Life means desperation for the technologically devout,
The sky outside remains dark ever since the blackout,
The landscape is rain soaked where the buildings stand tall,
Here, where we were nearly wiped out by a nuclear war,
So many missiles, unchecked AI sub routines fired those,
Using cold machine logic to destroy unknown human foes,
So, this is our world now unhappily ever after,
Where eyes keep recording and headsets transmit data,
The wealthy moved off world, and the poor were displaced,
Desperate people become cybernaughts, lost in digital space.
If I went to bed tonight,
And fell into a dream,
One that I wouldn’t awake from,
I would be content.
Dan Verkys 