I want to be held by the future
An open letter to non-linear time
I want to be held by my future, my cyborg insides and my fleshy outsides are not unified. Nothing is as it was, there’s some ancient ship with my name, but I am built different. I have never been taken down, and I will live forever. I gave up that fleshy, faulty interior so I could be one with my own eternity. I am: forever; and,
As my robotic heart replaces that flesh
The only memory I have left is love
The only memory I have
Is broken down on
the highway, his dad on the way
I was so lucky
I95 South as dreams of return...
The only flesh I have left is skin skin skin.
My brain still reaches out to me
Left in some jar far out in space
Left out through the telescope
I learn how to read the stars
the stars were so bright that night
how didn't I confess everything
Even if my dad didn't know himself
What replaced it was logic and reason.
You know, it isn't fair to cry
Just because time keeps on
Time keeps on for a lot of us
We just have to make it out
My hand is warm, clammy
But it wants to hold yours
All the same.
I lost track of it all. We traveled.
As space barrels on ahead, we
See each moment of present
Lurch into pastness, oblivious to
The truth: the past grips onto my ankles.
My robotic heart, cyborg brain, soft skin.
I am still in this shell. Somewhere.
Even if all the parts are replaced.
Maybe they are right about souls.
Maybe,
The future,
The past,
The present,
Is our soul,
Is our soul,
Is our soul,
Maybe.As I blast off into hyperdrive, hyperspeed, lightyears in a second, the traversal of time becomes limited. I am relatively aware of my incapability to maintain this, but I continue on nonetheless. Do you hear what I hear? The alert, the red, the flashing, I have gone on too long. I must recede into the past, like before, live again as myself as I have forever. I break through the barrier of time, and I am once again… crying in my room. A dark cloud overhead, lightning shooting horizontally through the sky. I hear him, below, huffing, puffing, blowing the house down. I’m sorry, I’m sorry I told her what you said, I’m sorry. I learn to cope, I have the wisdom of having had traversed all the known universe, I also had the sensibilities of myself, fragile and small. I lift up my small t-shirt to bear witness to my own damage. I withheld for longer than my ship. My ship, on the open waters, well its smaller, more like a canoe, exactly like a canoe. I hop in and out of this moment, the rapids approach and I’m ripped from this vessel. Aboard my vessel, I remember that my brain is what I search for, my heart is what I long for. I must find these to become human again. Humanity is all we have.
Combinations to unlock emotion
You no longer have a say, I
No longer speak-- not from a
Mouth, not from an organ. Flesh
Is a luxury, the only marks that
Remain: scars, tattoos, rage.
It did hurt, that bullet
Much more than the
Needles and ink
I wonder if time stops
Right when it happens
It stopped then.
Being away, being away,
Being nothing, for the
End of days, has me
Feeling a certain way.
Every moment:
A connected infinity
Each space reemerges
As the stars spit on us
Same sky, and all that
But it doesn't account
For Time.
Levers and switches abound
Which one to pull to let me back?
I felt escape was recourse, it was
The Easy Way Out. I Must Fight.
The allure of the future remains. I have become eternal, and yet even being held by the future reminds me of being held in the past. And presently, I have the hopes of feeling held again. I don’t know how it was lost in this expanse; stardust floats past me as I enter new nebulas, galaxies; I travers the echelons of space in search of myself. I know my soul lingers in what I’ve lost— I thought it good to be replaced and yet love and mind were ripped straight from my being. All the future holds is the hope of return, but these new robotic insides seek only sustenance; and I must oblige my mechanical self. Once again, I attempt the speed of years— god must’ve died for us to have reached this level of disjoint— and once again find myself in my home from long ago. He stands there shocked, I’m as tall as him now. I can fight back. I scream at him, I tell him he has no power over me anymore. He stands there, shocked. I get up in his face, I have never once found the spirit to do this. I raise my fist and I swing, my hand finds purchase in the cold bolted steel that surrounds me.
Hunched over in time, I hurl what remains of humanity onto the floor. I remember what it feels like to sob, to curl into myself, a single hand on my back or the arms of a lover. But aboard this vessel, I no longer feel. Floating out just feet away: my heart. Maybe its proximity called out to me as memory poured into my wires and cords. Ripped from the future I sit alone, staring into the screen of my laptop. I am writing, and writing, and writing, and writing. I am a writer before I am human in this present, and I am nothing without a keyboard. I wonder if the war that’s started will kill me, or the climate, or my own hand. An accident, a murder, a heart attack, I am susceptible to anything at this point. I think we all are. I am seeing my future as I sit here typing typing typing away— but its my past that engulfs me. It holds me down and screams at me. Why, after all we’ve endured, do you sit here when you’re needed outside. You’re needed on the floor, on the ground, in the streets, marching and shouting, throwing stones through their glass high towers, bringing them to their knees so they look into our eyes instead of their bottom line that rests just above our heads, that bottom line that we hold up with all our strength but are never thanked for, our good work, our work for the system that weighs down upon us with the force of their greed, the billionaires that forced me in the future to give away my humanity that forced me in the present to lose myself in my writing that forced me in the past to lose myself to others. The future holds the present holds the past, but they leave no more room for me. I am no longer held by anything but my thoughts in front of this screen, in front of these levers and switches, in front of his soured face and anger.
As my heart returns to my chest, I am overwhelmed by the anxiety of years passed without feeling, overwhelmed with the weight of hundreds upon hundreds of years passed by without being allowed anything but cold cold logic, the circuitry that defines me can’t withstand this flood. Somehow, without the organs to produce them, tears stream down my face once again. It has been multiple eternities since my heart and my body were separated. It will be forever until I have found my brain. The circuitry remains, serving my functions and my habitual motions. My evolution has stagnated as I have allowed this computer to ruin me. To rule me. To become me. To me. Help me me me me me me me me me me me me me me me me me me me
I wake up and look quickly across the calendar. Maybe that’s not the right word anymore. Maybe no words are correct at this point. Without my brain, I can’t think freely, and my heart is so so loud. Perhaps I should have waited to have both of them, but my heart was so destitute being away from my being. My circuits cry at my desire to be rid of them; they know I plot their downfall; they know I don’t sustain them; somehow I have defied the circuitry; somehow I have become liberated. My heart, heavy as it is, knows love and pain and folly and power and fullness and emptiness and goodness and evil and longing and envy and jealousy and nothing and everything and the system
shuts
down.
Maybe love exists
When my steel insides ask
For a little bit more
That was a haiku, an ancient---
Shut the fuck up nerd
If this is the future, count me---
I don't know anything
And I swallow my
Pride, in favor of a love
That calls out beyond
The timescape-- I am
Omnipresent. No one
Sees me. No one knows
Me. Not like myself.
The fuck out. I can't be here
Anymore. The past has me
Spiraling. I shouldn't be left
Alone in my thoughts. Don't
Leave me alone. Please.
Poetry. But, I used it for myself.
Because I will always be,
Have always been,
Am,
Greedy,
Greedy,
Greedy.
One day, my brain returns.
MY SKULL RECEDES MY SKULL MY
One day, the circuits leave
MY NERVES BEG FOR FLESH FOR FOR
One day, I just smile at him
MEMORY RETURNS FEELINGS MATCH
One day, I tell him I love him
CASUALTIES OF THE CYBORG REVOLUTION
One day, I forgive him.
HE HAS BEEN GONE->
HE WILL BE GONE->
HE IS GONE.
Aboard my ship, I realize that I am sorry. Without a brain, this feeling has no connection. The memories, they arrive par hasard. I survive par hasard. Every. Single. Moment. Why can’t I find a common thread other than myself? Where oh where could my thoughts be?
I don’t think I’ll find them.
I don’t know if I have any.
I don’t know if I will ever have any.
As I enter into eternity, dimensions pass across me in crossed cartography— trade routes that never quite reach their destinations, montages that never produce a thread, paragraphs that never reach a conclusion— I am thrust through every known universe. I watch as my past achieves what I never could, without the knowledge I hold now. I realize… maybe a common thread is just me. I see it, off ahead. But I don’t want it, I don’t want to remember it. I am so far away from him, he… he’s gone. He’s been gone. He will be gone?
My brain recognizes me, and my heart, taking in this moment of reunification, forces me forward. My tears fleeing my dried out frame… I… I remember…
He will never be gone.
I am attached forever.
To be separated from him.
Is to be destroyed.
But I won't become him.
I know to be better.
I still love him.
I still love myself.