somnolent swingers and the automaton waltz

welcome to the future
we were promised jetpacks
sorry
methadone puke cocktails only

like a firework exploding

Low rise high rise low rise high rise low rise high rise low rise high rise low rise high rise low rise high rise lowrise high lies low tide high rise low rise high rise low rise high rise.

tender pink sticky flesh moves in circles responding to otherwise glib customers, but not this time. Now they are sincere, they really mean it. Staring at rocks down the bottom of a sewer. Don’t bother, he said. There are fewer Things in the day, than are really worth it. But, she said, I don’t know why you always say That anyway. Without speaking more, the conversation took to a wing, and alighted around the passing of a huddle of elderly Women, these women likely arbiters of the world unspoken, performing their unenviable task, blindly.

Once, he let his deviance go on without him. It returned only slightly singed, Better than he expected. They spoke briefly about their time But neither seemed entirely interested, so they Agreed to never Let it happen again. Further on through the tunnel of their vision Lay the recently processed remains of, or the General shape of, An elderly man.  They took The long way ‘round to avoid it altogether Without expecting that he would move.

the desire of aeroplanes

the coming tide 

swept

creeping at our toes

 

lingering malignant rocks

at simple shores 

and distances yet to be fallen

upon

 

well wishes sent to foreign 

beaches scattered

with

bones of minor

beasts and better birds

 

lilting diamonds drift

over branches burning

without reason 

rent by lightning lingering

 

over fingers fecund and 

searing in green sweeps 

until the twelfth of may

 

near the bowery

sucking the craven air 

in ragged rifts, churned and 

burned into

rubble beyond our reach.

 

we leave

under the cold forgotten dawn

as empty vessels drift past

a huddle of insects frightened

 

hurling down the maw of

a gaping space below

they roil and tumble

 

towards that which

they do not know.

rattle a rocket of bones

they took up a tally

in tourniquet alley

and wept from a socket of thorn

soon they saw Sally,

who was part of the tally,

and leapt as though newly reborn

from cradles they cry

with a glint in the eye

of rockets rampant and roam

the devil did lie

from his cavernous thigh

and left but a pocket of loam.

from thence they gathered

in mutinous mather,

without so much as a fire

so hence they wence

to pocket a pence

and rend the heavenly spire

Sally said not a word,

As clear as a bird

But sang along anyway after.

zero recollection

And we walked so calmly down a row clean and clear 

  lead to believe we would forever find consolation here.

Instead, we were dismayed to find our

    destruction left by

    Abel

    himself,

a slight summary of our own foundering.

 

Driven by our lifelessness,

    we,

our

left to find only our memories

of a life we had

never known.

 

And we were not able to pull

    our electric lives from the filth

    we had so desperately created.

 

Our cards had read so

    surely

our future fates;

onely sign posts towards the feast –

    the bonfire of

spoon-fed self-confidence.

 

Poisoned by our phantoms,

   we were forever punished

by our revelries with

the agents.

The heart attacked machine

    has led us all

        from the castle

    forwards marching

    beyond the listless;

praise be to the captain’s chair,

left as fishermen

plumb;

 

thinking less of the letters breaking doorknobs

and joking as they went.

    We know the lame, rearranging the painful

                and you

  painful letters;

all lost amongst the dirt and grime.

 

Abraham left us only but the desire to flee.

 

Bleeding from the unclothed; we are on the run,

    fleeing.

We found the king amongst a clump of

    blue shoelaces,

easily tied into roads around our feet. 

 

Daughters mothers gathered

    from the sun

found themselves lost on a dusty highway.

 

Never had we felt so strongly amongst

     the lost roads of a forgotten wilderness.

 

A finished sundown led us

   further

unto the darkness.

 

The lightning struck shadows into our hearts

and left us creeping not to light,

flashing unarmed 

gazing out into the blaze.

 

 Unexpectedly we watched

     the breath leave our lungs

     and echoed over the loose leaves and lilting veils of the steam.

Tolling between the luckless outliers.

 

Crashing the wicked wonder,

we were lost amongst the thunder.

 

Condemned to drift

     In bitter breezes that sing

a tarnished

tune

 

the church has no formal doctrine regarding ctrl-X

“The attack I demonstrated is caused by the multiple vulnerabilities within the syscall interface of the CNU [Cisco Native Unix] kernel,” Cui tells Dark Reading. “It is caused by the lack of input validation at the syscall interface, which allows arbitrary modification of kernel memory from userland, as well as arbitrary code execution within the kernel. This, in turn, allows the attacker to become root, gain control over the DSP [Digital Signal Processor], buttons, and LEDs on the phone. The attack I demonstrated patches the existing kernel and DSP in order to carry out stealthy mic exfiltration.”

Go to, it is a plague / That Cupid will impose for my neglect / Of his almighty dreadful little might.

The iron grey sky above him had not changed in tone or texture for three days.  It provided him no hint of rolling clouds or that distant orb that had once heated the ground upon which he stood.  Before setting off over the hillside, he kicked vacantly at the cold stony ground and wondered if the sky would change before he made it back to the forward engineering unit.  That is, if it ever changed.  Sighing through his thin lips, he trundled along, heavy in his gear and heavy in his heart under the hermetic sky.  Vacant thoughts and minor voices roiled around his inner ears as he walked along, the loudest of which was the one that he did not want to hear.  It bit at his mind, day in and day out, taking chunks away to be sequestered there with those other persistent thoughts.  He imagined that this gnawing consumption of his brain had some primeval origins, perhaps something to protect him, some kind of force other than logic and amplifiers.  But then, just as he would be considering the antithesis of logic, those exact amplifiers and condensers would whirr to life and re-orient his mind.  A fail-safe, they called it.  

See the man wonder.  See the wonder lost among stones of progress.  Frayed and fragile husks left tearing themselves to pieces longing for the lustful wonderment of a child.  See the man look for the child.  See the child fleeing as a shadow from the sun.  The ever-creep of light.  

Stopping before the great white wall of the Unit, he chewed his bottom lip for a moment before passing through the brilliantly silver sequence of the sensor environment gates.  The amplifiers pressed deeply into the creases of his meat-brain rang out in a cadence that he thought resembled some kind of electric aria, and sounded a final metallic chord to signal his entry.  Another sigh rolled from between his dry lips, as his gaze wandered among the clumps of men and women, willing transplants each, working steadily and with dogged focus on whatever mundane task the Unit required of them at the time.  To his immediate left, three statuesque men were guiding the replacement of the overhead sensor gates with the fluid ease of perfection and an easy chatter amongst them, brilliantly white teeth glittering occasionally through taut young mouths that sat squarely in symmetrical faces.  

Feel the bile rise.  Feel a curling blue flame licking at the base of the spine, stealing that hot wet breath from between broken teeth.  Smell the noise rattle in your brain, fully formed cruelties singed and cooking about the corners of the mouth.  Ready at an instance to flow raging as a river of tar might devour weeds and the ephemera of men. 

He continued his trundle down the main thoroughfare, glancing up occasionally to note that fictional sky above them all.  For a fleeting moment, he considered that the others were unaware of its fictitious nature.  More likely that they simply did not care.  A flurry of motion to his right re-oriented his attention towards the supply station.  A few others had rushed the console in anticipation of a new delivery.  The quick dispatch screen showed a pile of silver-white, nearly translucent pills sitting next to a clear vial containing a multitude more.  The label on the vial read “Polymer 100.”  A man chortled in glee as the first of the vials materialized on the console only to be snatched up in quick succession by the nearby settlers.  Without so much as a passing thought, they shoveled the pills into gaping mouths at a speed that made him reel.  They had not even had time to read the small, nearly unintelligible, description that flashed briefly alongside the image of the vial on the dispatch screen.  He blinked rapidly trying to follow and could only make out a few clips and phrases.  ”Full immersion” followed by “total freedom” and “clinical trial.”  He stared at those who we finally dispersing after their gluttonous display, faces all as blank as eggs.  

Taste the nausea.  Smell the sour at the back of the tongue. Feel the deep fear and anxiety rise as water in a deluge.  The flood in the brain that sprang from the gut.  The feedback loop of dirty water in dirty crevasse, sinking down deeply to flow back again.  Seething and filled with a terror that eats, a terror that burns under muscle tissue, a terror that moves.  Feel the breathing coming ragged, throat scratching, eyes seared.  Clenched teeth no longer rattle in that skull.  That skull riven in two.