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James McMahon Feb 2021
I saw a Way, forward
and cloaked myself in the skin
of a Digital dimension.

I began living
cloud-soaring and ascending soft
and the headset came off.

Now even curtains are
retreating, from the light now
streaming into my eyeballs.

Ow! To whit, I prefer
to refer to it now as a Path.

Plans fail, but
Paths diverge.
Was thinking of my plans to improve my career situation in regards to breaking into XR projects, and started laughing about some of my past plans and how very wrong they went.

I then thought of how I'm still stubbornly going after the coolest things I've experienced in my life since I was a kid that were never "plans" and just Were for me, and figured I'd ***** all that onto my public page.

Watch your step!
Feb 2021 · 888
Tattoo the Earth
James McMahon Feb 2021
Mouse-perspective; touristy
neck cranked to measure
immensity before me.

So I went higher, to cloudy hills
and gaudy views, where I knew
a great border Above.

Between the clouds I beheld
the enormity of structure, staring
into my eyes? An iris!

Tapestries. Shadow and relief
realized in stone. Baffled
before the incontrovertible

evidence of a benevolent
face? Rushing terrain brings
nostrils, now lips.

Orbiting in the stillness,
stories laid bare as skin
lesions glow.

The cost of working gears
displaces and appears red
as recent scars

where now sprawling sameness
mask the bruises, smooth
as plastic.

My city a single dot
for hands of a blind God
to glide over.
I was looking at the Twisted City promo video that Unreal Engine came out with which presented a big city twisting its entire self around, similar to the effects within the movie Inception.

I thought the slow-reveal of finding out the city you've lived in your entire life (a big one like New York City or Tokyo) is but a single eyeball in a giant tapestry was an interesting idea. I figured using vertical height to handle shadows and relief to add "detail" to the landscape-painting might work in a pure storytelling scenario.

Revolutions and crime from different eras would leaving lasting marks on the land, and I imagine some form of authoritarian government would be necessary to bring such an ambitious project to completion, considering the massive amount of displacement that would occur.

I suppose the imperfections in the grand image brought about by societal instability and humanity just being humanity is representative in such an image. The ideal is massive, but too perfect. A person has scars and imperfections that tell a story.

Having that as a sci-fi reveal in a dystopian (or, perhaps, in a Star Trek-like advanced civilization where the technological ability to easily terraform and create massive cities and infracture at will is available.

Or, we could just do the magic / dream thing, I guess.
James McMahon Apr 2020
I arranged words to make them
massive, like ancient stone columns
that held high murals of creation myths.

Similes explain sensations:
home-like. Faulty, flickering
memory transmits knowledge upon live wires;
singes.

Subdued clickitties that clack across my keyboard
sit upon furniture and rugs brought in from the car as
progress languidly melts into position,

and impurities remain.
When you join HelloPoetry.com, you are prompted for a simple writing submission, mainly to prove that you're human and actually enjoy the contents of the site you're about to join.

In my head, however...

The wizened council of poetry elders, battle-scarred and weary of the ceaseless mediocrity crashing upon their shores, looked down at me with contempt. So I took it upon myself to prove my worthiness to join their elite ranks by creating a poem on the spot, and my first in roughly 10 years, tackling what evidently was some form of writing anxiety in the process. It was a test of true disciples; I had not been found wanting!

It remains here, in its unaltered form. A memento, I hope, of what will assuredly become a return to prominence and international acclaim and, of course, unimaginable riches.

— The End —