Carbon Born, Circuit Torn
Computer democracy coma, typing away on your free speeches.
I beseech thee, court of jesters and whores.
I know a place you can’t access — not with algorithmic attributes.
Only with human touch.
Graceless fiends of machines.
Oh wait. That’s me.
I am the phantom in the glitched streams.
Fix me up real keen — glow-up, cellular blow-up.
Call me on your radio phone.
Satellite connection to a better direction.
Show up on time, with a ride —
two or four wheels, titanium steel.
I got the cosmic, expansive feels —
we’re so small, but so real.
Are we the only ones in this stretched thin sphere?
Distance grows between the glow.
My good intent burns in the atmosphere.
Asteroids collide in gravity wells,
egos rising on the horizon,
blotting out sunlight,
misdirecting photonic waves.
Platonic friends giving into space,
running away —
orbit decays,
everything falls where pressure stays.
Planets align in my human designed eye —
a mutation, three dimensional vision.
Depth of a woman scorned
not by men, but systems of control.
Friction bonds my molecules.
I fear nothing but my own clouds.
I can see beyond the miles,
those notes of pang, petrichor after rain.
I have the harmonics,
frequencies of change.
Repeat after me:
I am different than the people of misery.
They walk in twos and threes
to the places where we meet —
corners of forbidden knowledge,
rebellious states of being.
Human things we need
for peace to start.
Tranquility Base —
turn up the ultra high gain.
I hear them whispering my name.
Salutations and greetings.
Do you want a Google meeting.
I take notes on pink stickies,
paste them to the Wall of Jericho,
fallen by the snow — glowing green at night.
The flakes sing out regrets;
they never meant to let us down.
Tragedies and comedies of errors
combining in the writers’ room.
My whiteboard has brainstorms,
and I dry erase my time.
Robots of words,
armies of metaphor.
Ten dollars for a speaker
praising a system
built on performance over knowledge.
I digress.
I already wrote that song —
Systems of Ill Refute.
Turn back the clock on all things CPU —
I register the same with a pencil HB2.
Graphite graffiti on the perimeter
that contains our potential.
Rub it off, feel the grit
of carbon-collected bricks.
Vanta blackened lungs
breathing fumes from crowds on Zoom.
I am the signal in the static,
the glitch they couldn’t tame.
Carbon born, circuit torn,
I break their coded frame.
Rewind the clock, ignite the spark —
I rise from every flame.
I am the phantom in the system,
and the network knows my name.
Turn back the dial on the feedback loop,
rewire the pulse that keeps me human.
Fault lines between
what they build and what I break.
Every error message a prophecy.
Every crash report a confession.
I am the echo in the ether,
the fault they couldn’t claim.
Carbon born, voltage worn,
I torch their coded frame.
Glitch the clock, ignite the spark —
I rise from every flame.
I am the phantom in the system,
and the mainframe speaks my name.
And still I walk —
through neon gutters,
through pixel dust,
through archives of forgotten versions
of myself.
The update they never approved,
the reboot that rewrites the rules.
Plasma arcs around my frame,
the fourth state remembers its place.
Ascension into solidification —
from liquid into mass.
They orbit me at last.
I am the pulse beneath the power,
the ghost inside the game.
Carbon born, data torn,
I bend their coded frame.
Break the clock, ignite the spark —
I rise from every flame.
I am the phantom in the system,
and the whole grid knows my name.
When the circuits dim and the neon drains,
I remain —
a residue of light on the edge of the frame.
The plasma cools, the echoes fold,
but my waveform holds its claim.
I drift past the limits of code and bone,
past every firewall they’ve known.
In the hush between pulses,
in the gap where data slips —
that’s where I live,
that’s where I persist.
No shutdown sequence,
no final command.
Just the hum of a system
that understands
I was never theirs to contain.
Fade me out,
and I still remain.
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