I have managed to finalise a poem that I am happy with for the time being. Of course this can still be developed but I feel that this poem holds all of the content I want to explore and convey through spoken word. The narrative somewhat goes in a full circle, as the beginning of poem contemplates the notion of living in a simulation that we are aware of, but we have also lost the ability or energy to care, content in our own loop. The ending alludes to the shedding of skin, or the removing of the mask both internally and externally, offering a brief moment of a potential to break the cycle, before ending with the admittance that our conditioning in this society often takes over our condition, our identity. This ending feels open ended but also loops back to the start where the poem is beginning a stream of consciousness that eventually subsides into an unconscious retreat back to the start of the stream of thought.

I like this structure because it doesn’t offer answers, which is really not my intention here, yet gives enough imagery and content to potentially provoke a response from the audience, and offers the chance for each individual to connect with the words on their own level. As a prototype, this poem 1) gets the ideas I have had over this project into an organised but abstract form, 2) starts to build a potential narrative/conceptual framework for my future projects (the album and video), and 3) opens up avenues for further exploration, both through words, sound and image, as I read this poem and find myself envisioning a particular alternate dimension that directly mirrors the world we are all a part of.

A study of phantom limbs

Simulated surrealism for a brief remission into pleasure

who cares

the brain can’t tell the difference anyway

let the pulses fire through fleshy(find synonym) corridors in quiet homes

senses seared away, vision taken by glares hotter than the fires burnt in

outside, unapologetically altered and reduced to a stringent mass

a blubbering wreck, blasted by furnaces built for millions

Too used to it, too far gone

Simulated solace with no throne laid upon

just

dirt

So what’s the point then?

Live and breathe and perish and be reignited

cup a hand around the flame to keep it burning as long as you can

without fearing the snuff,

the inevitable return to the ground you sprung from,

that you now lay beneath

feeding the next turn of the wheel

A garbled message of programmes that don’t compute,

an operating system designed to swallow itself whole and keep feeding

forcing tail into throat and end to start

until nothing remains but a bloody maw outstretched

overextended

_____

scales shed over coarse ground

the mask seared off, a silent sound

the gaping maw begs for surplus

unjust

allocation

to some

the second skin will make do for sustenance

burnt synapses

cancelled connections and pointless directions

enter the spin

over and over

cybernetics gone sober

____

claws outstretched upwards

welcome the rapture

shed scales for chrome

transmuted agency from voice to drone

a final push quiets the buzzing in the brain

systems down

forced further below

eyeline compromised by exhausted smoke

My condition knows better

But my conditioning makes me blind