Those who do not fit in with the machine are ground into mince, feeding the machine, oiling her cogs with blood, making a supply of meat that can be advertised, sold as basic value. Every space is advertising space and crackles with a static of its own, interference gets in everywhere, makes dust, ages us, wears down what is to what was. We must live here, in the now, but we’re too busy fingering at murders.
Blood runs in our hair.
Welcome to the Machine. PVC-soft pseudo-cultures for the genetically dead. Foundations of deviation and passive-aggressive sadisticisms. Repression breaks loose. Rapes its way around the room. Savaging the innocent bystander sitting in the corner, watching the telly. Minding own business. Borna virus frenzy.
I asked them once how much longer this could go on. It was a slow meeting and the LCD projector was broken, so someone had to say something. I was told how long have you got, and that’s the frightening thing. I could die tonight.
Worse, I could still be alive tomorrow.
All I want to do is lie down to sleep with someone warm in my arms, someone who smells nice, not of this rotten place, this dead planet and its people. I don’t remember much more than you of how it was when we were younger, but I’m coming to a conclusion. It’s a further frightening thing: that the world has always been this way. For some reason, we don’t hear it in childhood, when we are asleep, and when we do hear it, we tune it out. Dismiss the world that is trying to get through, seeking out your channel, our frequency. Breaking down the scrambling signals. Still, we ignore it because, by then, we are old and not young enough to fight. We just want to lie down with someone warm in our arms and then, we look and there’s no-one left for that and we are soon dead. With these thoughts in my head, I lie down to sleep and dream.
Contusions of time and place cause me to lose my way. The buildings sink in on themselves. Roads crackle and burn with an isosceles fires. Their psyches whisper about me, waiting to be born, then they carbonise, darken and dance to the taint. Misshapen men and women come crowding out at me, eyes open, holes torn in parchment. Pale progeny crawl, pouring from their bodies, swelling their ranks. I lose focus and they shift around me of their own silent accord and I wonder what it feels like to split the atom with an old carving knife.
******
It is the next day, which is much the same as the day before that. The language here is out of synch with the thought behind it. In open-plan office space, we bear witness to meaning’s steady erasure:
a) Do not ask when you can task.
b) Do not go ahead when you can be going forward.
c) Do not understand when you can get a flavour.
Taste this, there is nothing here. My sleep is vacant and my nights without substance, it all started here, this funeral parlour outlined by the heat signatures from photocopiers and echoing with the sound of such empty-empty talk.
You can do nothing outside these established, unyielding patterns:
a) You have an ongoing strategy, not a life.
b) You have an income, not a wage packet.
c) You have work colleagues, no friends.
d) Bury yourself in workloads, varied and conflicting.
The monitor screen dulls, blinking, and I blink too.
Did I get up? Did I move? Have I ever left my desk?
Looking around, I see eyes flickering with an inner data-light, the constant rattling of fingers on keyboard keys. Should I tell them the power has cut out? That everything is dead? Then, somewhere, an inkjet printer whines and I am matching it, humming along, and I get back to work too. I type these words without thinking.
We Are The Power.
This is not what you wanted, is it?
Nope, me neither.
This is not what you thought. No fantasy future ever found its seed, its bright root, in this numb twilight of desk-pods and office-cells. Nothing shines here, all is badly-lit like low-budget science-fiction.
How could a
Blood runs in our hair.
Welcome to the Machine. PVC-soft pseudo-cultures for the genetically dead. Foundations of deviation and passive-aggressive sadisticisms. Repression breaks loose. Rapes its way around the room. Savaging the innocent bystander sitting in the corner, watching the telly. Minding own business. Borna virus frenzy.
I asked them once how much longer this could go on. It was a slow meeting and the LCD projector was broken, so someone had to say something. I was told how long have you got, and that’s the frightening thing. I could die tonight.
Worse, I could still be alive tomorrow.
All I want to do is lie down to sleep with someone warm in my arms, someone who smells nice, not of this rotten place, this dead planet and its people. I don’t remember much more than you of how it was when we were younger, but I’m coming to a conclusion. It’s a further frightening thing: that the world has always been this way. For some reason, we don’t hear it in childhood, when we are asleep, and when we do hear it, we tune it out. Dismiss the world that is trying to get through, seeking out your channel, our frequency. Breaking down the scrambling signals. Still, we ignore it because, by then, we are old and not young enough to fight. We just want to lie down with someone warm in our arms and then, we look and there’s no-one left for that and we are soon dead. With these thoughts in my head, I lie down to sleep and dream.
Contusions of time and place cause me to lose my way. The buildings sink in on themselves. Roads crackle and burn with an isosceles fires. Their psyches whisper about me, waiting to be born, then they carbonise, darken and dance to the taint. Misshapen men and women come crowding out at me, eyes open, holes torn in parchment. Pale progeny crawl, pouring from their bodies, swelling their ranks. I lose focus and they shift around me of their own silent accord and I wonder what it feels like to split the atom with an old carving knife.
******
It is the next day, which is much the same as the day before that. The language here is out of synch with the thought behind it. In open-plan office space, we bear witness to meaning’s steady erasure:
a) Do not ask when you can task.
b) Do not go ahead when you can be going forward.
c) Do not understand when you can get a flavour.
Taste this, there is nothing here. My sleep is vacant and my nights without substance, it all started here, this funeral parlour outlined by the heat signatures from photocopiers and echoing with the sound of such empty-empty talk.
You can do nothing outside these established, unyielding patterns:
a) You have an ongoing strategy, not a life.
b) You have an income, not a wage packet.
c) You have work colleagues, no friends.
d) Bury yourself in workloads, varied and conflicting.
The monitor screen dulls, blinking, and I blink too.
Did I get up? Did I move? Have I ever left my desk?
Looking around, I see eyes flickering with an inner data-light, the constant rattling of fingers on keyboard keys. Should I tell them the power has cut out? That everything is dead? Then, somewhere, an inkjet printer whines and I am matching it, humming along, and I get back to work too. I type these words without thinking.
We Are The Power.
This is not what you wanted, is it?
Nope, me neither.
This is not what you thought. No fantasy future ever found its seed, its bright root, in this numb twilight of desk-pods and office-cells. Nothing shines here, all is badly-lit like low-budget science-fiction.
How could a
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