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Ashley Chapman Oct 2017
Feel empty in your post apocalyptic City of Angels,
Where not even your pets are real!
An electric android, a sheep or a frog,
The whir-flutter of micro-electrical wings of a butterfly.

Good, and so you ought.

Now grab the handles of your empathy box,
And in a shared virtual hallucination –
Feel: empathy, depression, pain, delusion and despair,
The outré myriad gifts of consciousness.

Billions of discombobulated and disconnected wrecks:
Adam's sons; Eve's daughters,
And among them simulations too,
Fakes! androids!
A phony circuit of implanted semi-conscious memories,
A hive of neural malaise!
Welcome to our world;
know how dead inside I am.

You, yes, you:

Need a pet to make you more complete?
Maybe you can afford
A Fake Fakir Flake like me who looks like Jude Law,
Sounds like Richard Burton,
And silently romances you like Rudolph Valentino.
Come and stick what’s left of your mind,
In here,
In hair,
Hear her:
har, har, har…

A box of lies...

A voice, Mercer's,
With texture from an age you neither lived in nor dared in:
Al Jerry's, a TV actor,
Droning on in pre-selected tones.

The real thing, the men, the women, the children - their animals -
Made in the wild, wild desert,
In the green pulsing savannah,
On the open crusted sea;
Now too, washed, choked, and drained,
Too many spliced and diced mutations,
Iterating your image:
The thing that was my heart,
My Child, now its imitation.
Performed for Celine's Salon at Gerry's Club, Soho, London and at Time Event Space, Glasgow, April 29, 2022.

This comes from my fascination with Philip K. **** and Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep. In this, his future dystopian vision, androids are retired, a euphemism for terminated, when they have passed their legal age limit after four years. Humans, us, have by now ruined our environment and become enthralled to a false religion, Mercerism , a fabricated make belief, spun by an actor, Al Jerry. The empathy boxes plunge the followers of Mercerism into a shared virtual hallucination. I was also enthralled by Jude Law in AI by Steven Spielberg who gave what I thought was a mesmerising portrait of a *** robot, the ultimate Lothario and so tragically programmed to flaw.

In 2017 Mercerism was the theme of The Tunnel, an art collective to which I was a participator, through poetry.

Then in 2022,I was invited to perform it in Glasgow as part of Celtic tour of Britain for Celine's Salon.

It will soon be published by Wordville Press.

Blade Runner, the film, now Blade Runner 49, is based on this dark interpretation of where we could all be headed.
Julie Grenness  Mar 2016
DESTINY
Julie Grenness Mar 2016
Destiny for humanoids---
Shall we run by androids?
Or shall we be the androids?
Let's prognosticate,
Predict our fates----
Shall mankind claim the Universe?
Or is Anarchy to be the serve?
Teeming billions in a rat race,
What is destiny for our Earth place?
In our lifetime, we'll never know,
Unless Armageddon explodes,
Let's hope the young are star hopping,
Instead of retail therapy shopping,
Too young for the stars,
Too old for the seas afar,
Nothing left to explore,
Disaffection, please no more,
Shall we be the androids?
Destiny for the humanoids?????????
Feedback welcome.
Trevor Gates Apr 2013
VI.


Welcome back

To the greatest show on earth

Well

At least your earth

Your world

Your mind
Your brain and skull and cartilage
And blood and guts and nails.

Your ears and your nose and your eyes
Your mouth and your fingers and your teeth

The bile, the pus, the plasma, the snot, the discharge

The everlasting, physical being of our callous calamity:
The flesh of dehumanization;
The soul of debauchery;
The mind of maliciousness;
The avarice of mortal delusion
Forged from the blade of segregation

Titans of industry
Gods of ******
malcontent youth
Diseased from each other
And their mentors

The masters
The hands
The hands smothering your body in mud, caressing your skin with a lovely touch.
Fingers smooth out wet clay on your chest; on your *******
Coming around to feel your goose bumps
Your *******
Your aroused body
I can feel your heavy breathing
Is it getting hot in here?
Fog up the windows
Let me unbutton this shirt
Or maybe I'll just rip it off

Suckling on my finger.  I feel your hands wrap around my belt
Pull it off

Open your mouth
Let me enter
Pull me closer
Deeper
Let me know you want me to please you
To satisfy you
I will

It's getting bigger
Harder

It's getting warmer
Hotter
Wetter

The sweat around your *** is the sweetest

Pull, squeeze, moan, beg, roar, toss, push, ******, finger, lick, bite, drool, eat, play, ******, moan, ****, ****, touch, ****, turn, harder, faster, moan, slower, deeper, longer, push, pop, rush, ***, stroke, slither, bite, lick, ****, roll, eat, ****, gasp, ****, moan, ******, ****, bite, push, ****, ******, ****, lick, squeeze, moan, faster, ****, deeper, again, again, again, and
Again.

Rise

Rise

Again

The Neon angels
The paranoid androids
The singing kings
The screaming queens
The velvet demons
The glorified burnouts
The occupants of netherworld Los Angeles
Of upside down New York
Of abstinent Paris
Of Leather clad London
Of **** chum *** Boston
Of nuclear Moscow
  
Of this and that and another one of those and a round on the house!

(applause)



Dedicated to: Milk, shampoo, James Dean, Pink Floyd, Feudal Japan, Terry Gilliam, Rasputin, Marquis De Sade, Archangel Gabriel, Shiva, Gary Oldman, USB cables, Staplers, Converse shoes, California license plates, George Harrison, Jaguars, Quantum Physics, down syndrome, Jason Lee, Lily Allen, Indian women, Multi-colored rain, manbearpig, Pandora Peaks, Dethklok, The Evil Dead and of course all those that need no introduction.  

We'll see you soon.
This is part of a free-formed writing exercise I developed to cope with my "Creative isolation"

long story.
enjoy
"What do you mean you've never seen Blade Runner? My GOD! I didn't think there was a single person on the planet that hasn't seen that. They showed it to us in elementary school as an example of a prophetic, foretelling, social commentary."
"Well, I never was a fan of fiction or science, even though somehow I've still managed to live my fair share of both."
" Do androids dream of electric sheep? What are your dreams?"
"Electric...sheep?"
"Yeah, that's the title of the book the movie is based on, but like, I'm honestly curious about the second part. It's a better ice-breaker than your deprived childhood".
"You wanna' know what I dream? I dream of a world soaked in gasoline, and a lone, shadowy, figure masked by deceit and decay, filling the air with a rotten sulfuric smell as he festers in his own filth. I can't see this guy clearly, but I know him. I know him in my head and my heart and he just stands there, idle, in a place where he can see the silhouetted skyline of the entire wretched city. Trapped between his forefinger and thumb is  a match donning a dancing flame for a hat, performing a flamenco routine for two wild eyes.  Eyes that indicate a sureness of what to do, but make no use of intentions. They seem to sort of flip between question and answer with each dimming and brightening of the match's beacon.  The question appears to already have been answered, but has yet to be acted upon. He's tinkering with the notion.  Is this due to hesitation in the man's mind, or is he simply toying with the already squirming city? The final act is inevitable, yet the ulterior option, to extinguish the trigger, still stands...". He pauses.
His new partner's face has lost most of its color and his mouth is propped open with a jack made of sheer horror and curiosity.
"Well JESUS man! Aren't you gonna tell me the rest of it?"
"The rest of it is: I wake up".
He languidly looks around, takes a pull from the bottle, and proceeds to pull his mask over his face. His partner isn't sure, but he thought he'd caught a smile crack before his mouth was covered,
  "...and not like a haha I'm yankin' your chain kinda grin. This ****** meant it", his partner would recall later to some buddies in a bar.
"I wake up and wonder whether I'm the man, or the match".
He slams the magazine into his weapon and rips the slide back to load up the first round of ammunition. He exits the vehicle, and heads towards the disheveled building that has more or less sunk into its foundation. His new partner shakes his head, wipes his face with his paws of hands, pulls on his mask, and flicks the *** end of his cigarette whose embers have already begun to eat away at the cotton filter out towards the woods. He catches the light from the buckshot of the cherry out of the corner of his eye and imagines that match spinning towards the city.
"What the **** have I gotten into..."
Excerpt from a story that is being written some time in the next 30 years
J M Surgent  May 2014
Old Cameras
J M Surgent May 2014
No matter what I do
theres always something
I want more
Like a camera
or a trip
or even just something
just a little bit better
than what I have, even if its older, because
sometimes things
of old are
so much better
than the new,
like how I look at
These cameras I dream of
in stores, in
flea markets,
I hold their predecessors,
their grandfathers
and feel the cold calm
of the metal body
in my hands, and know that
things just aren’t built this way any
more, and people
aren’t what they used to be, or
so it seems,
from the history classes
and all the books
I read, about life
before it was my time
and how people seemed
to give a ****,
and didn’t just sit
and whine
and waste so much time,
but how did they live
before Facebook
how could they
fall in love without
Tinder,
or read the news without
Twitter
or pass their classes without
google on their Androids in their laps to pass the answers on the test before them?

So I guess they were just tougher
than us, like these old cameras
I want, and they
didn’t want, like we
want to pretend we need
so we don’t have to accept
what’s right in front of us.

Our excuse that
We need to wait for film
To develop.
TJW  Oct 2013
The Time Traveller
TJW Oct 2013
Set fire to the Antique Shop,
We’re one step ahead of the cops.
Mannequins of Elvis begin to melt.
Free from past matters; free from guilt.
Promoting the prosperity
As we hoard hostility
Androids ambushing Arkansas,
They seek to find ménage trois.
Achieving self-awareness
They want fill the void’s emptiness
Chugging R & R by the fifths.
By our thumbnails we dangle off cliffs.
Thread by thread, the veil unfolds.
Standing all alone, I’m left in the cold.
Show me how much you care.
Push me in my wheelchair.
Listening to what drives you crazy
Eventually helps you stop being lazy.
Lilly is spinning me dizzy
She belongs to the world of yesterday
The haze is now fading away.
If only I could stay
for just one day
But Behold
I feel you should be told
I have come from the end
When the Earth is condemned.
As I tell the tall tale,
How we came to live in hell,
once we found the holy grail.
“We overcame our fear
The classified was made clear.
We launched all the nukes,
By order of the Skywalker named Luke.
The framers were lousy architects;
They left the balance completely hectic.
The CEO’s got away with fraud.
Thinking their work was the will of God.”
I met you in the gloomiest bar.
We speed across the town in my car.
Questioning why we remained silent.
The flickering florescent light compliment
The tone of shallow yellow paint,
I can finally hibernate.
After I left the oblivious,
Do I finally notice,
It’s hesitation that leads
me astray from redemption.
TJW 2013
Aaron LaLux Sep 2019
Screen Crack [16]

Jesus!

What the fck,
wait, Jesus,  has nothing to do with this,

your hands glued to the latest PDA device,
hands glued along with your eyes,
seems you cling to your PDA  for dear life,
like it’s as important as a TAH, what’s a TAH look it up,

it’s a Total Artificial Heart,
you are the “art” in artificial,
since when did Personal Displays of Affection PDAs,
get replaced with Personal Digital Assistants,

no way phones could be the new PDAs I can’t accept that,
oh well I guess it’s the perfect sign of the times,
people used to show affection & kiss in public,
now they don’t even notice & the only kisses given are emojis,

no romance they don’t even hold hands show love or show up,

would rather ******* in silence than deal with this,
& maybe that makes me part of the problem,
see I could go out & try to socialize but I stay inside instead,
& don’t even mind ‘cause most people aren’t worth the stress,
plus it’s been so long since I’ve been in a relationship,
if I met someone I wouldn’t even know what to say anyways,
we replaced Empathy with Apathy eye contact with iPhones,
now we’re all bored Cyborgs & alienated Androids,

we keep avoiding each other instead of enjoying each other,  we keep assuming we are annoying each other,
which prevents us from successfully joining each other,
so we effectively self isolate ourselves from one another,

one step closer to an Anti-Social New World Order New Age,
every time we become afraid & walk away instead of engage,

would rather scatter than talk to someone,
in a way that could be construed as rude,
so we just walk-on & ignore every single someone,
even though one of those someones is you,

in the Narcissistic Network of this Sociopathic Society,
where the only certainty is that this cycle of denial is ******,
what the fck, totally stuck, mind fckt & ******,
into that lil cancer causing PDA your hot little hands hold,

Steve Jobs got cancer,
you think that’s a random freakin’ coincidence,
people that work with electronic devices their whole lives,
get sick & this is not just a few examples of isolated incidents,

it’s not a rumor that consumers get tumors from electronics,

even Stevie Wonder could see how Stevie Jobs got sick,
died in his mid 50’s alone & in bed thin as a stick,

all those billions couldn’t save him,
so what makes you think you’ll survive,
why should I care how you live if you don’t care how you die,
think you’re saving time on that portable electronic device,
but you’re living a lie wasting your life not saving your time,
because no one ever regrets spending less on screen time,
but people often regret not spending more time,
in nature attention undivided with loved ones by their side,
before they die, going to do you a favor, save you the trouble,
of spending your whole life chasing things on a digital screen,
I’m going to quote Steve Jobs’s last words here,
so you can start making changes now before it’s too late.

“I have come to the pinnacle of success in business.
In the eyes of others, my life has been the symbol of success.
However, apart from work, I have little joy. Finally, my wealth is simply a fact to which I am accustomed.
At this time, lying on the hospital bed & remembering all my life, I realize all the accolades & riches of which I was once so proud, have become insignificant with my imminent death.
In the dark, when I look at the green lights, of the equipment for artificial respiration, feel the buzz of their mechanical sounds, I can feel the breath of my approaching death looming over me.
Only now do I understand that once you accumulate enough money for the rest of your life, you have to pursue objectives that are not related to wealth.
It should be something more important:
For example, stories of love, art, dreams of my childhood.
No, stop pursuing wealth, it can only make a person into a twisted being, just like me.”…

See, now you’ve heard it directly from a genius,
so there you go don’t say I didn’t tell you so,
still you hear the final words of a brilliant billionaire,
& instead if take his advice you say “Who cares?”,

& that is actually a serious question, who cares?

Probably not me or you so why would we heed a warning,
no matter how wise the words were that were wrote,
we’re too busy trying to find fake treasures on Pokemon Go,
or read the latest news or scroll the latest posts,

seems all those Apples & Androids, have made us apathetic,
bit the forbidden fruit, in The Garden of Electronic Eden,
**** streaming has replaced actual ***, it takes less effort,
exchanged intimacy for IoT, replaced *** with EMFs,

no ******* just internet no farmer’s markets on weekdays,
just products on eBay & freebased sympathy that’s synthetic,
so we don’t feel the vibration of our brothers & sisters,
we just feel the vibration of our phones in our pocket,
we don’t notice the signs of our civilization in decline,
we just notice our phone’s notifications when they go off,

see the more connected we become to the virtual world,
the less connected we become to the actual world,

& I’m having a melt down,
witnessing everyone on their cell phones,
& I want to find a reason to believe in a real person to love,
but I feel like hope is gone & we’re all just lost without a home,
& I’m just as guilty as the rest of us,
‘cause I’m often also lost in the zone on my phone like a drone,

& I’m not religious but maybe we really do need Jesus,
maybe I really do need Jesus,
what the fck, wait,
Jesus,  has nothing to do with this,

a whole new generation of users has been created,
through the use of new additions of cell phones & laptops,
& some of the users are as young as 8 years old,
computers are the new & improved evolution of crack rock,
but family’s are so used to their kids using that they just shrug,
even though their kids are so addicted that they can’t stop,

some even enable kid’s addiction by buying them new editions,

cracked screens from dropping your phone,
gives you a minor heart attack,
oh how attractive cancer seems when it’s attractively wrapped,
in the form of an impersonal personalized phone case artifact,

Silver, Gold or Grey, SnapChat is the new black.

What the fck, hands glued to the latest PDA device,
hands glued along with your eyes,
seems you cling to your PDA  for dear life,
like it’s as important as a TAH, what’s a TAH, look it up,

look up look up,
you are alive in a body on these beautiful lands,
mathematically a 1 in 400 trillion chance of being born,
you’re literally the most amazing miracle you could ever have!

There’s a whole world out there,
please find someone to get to know & love,
because there’s probably someone right next to you right now,
that’s willing to give you their all & it’s obvious,

all you have to do to see is set down your phone & look up!
If you’d only just look up!

But, you’re too busy playing Pokemon Go to notice love,

I know, we’re part of a 1st World society,
& we all play our part by being passively compliant,
in order to be an accessory to our country’s atrocities,
so we get dressed up with the latest techno accessories,

I know,
you don’t want to think about it too much,
because then you might feel guilty, so you stay out of touch,
keeping your head down like you’re mourning a lost love,
there’s an actual psychological condition for this,
Cognitive Dissonance is what it’s called,

so you stay on your phone, not wanting to get involved,
because it’s easier to simply not feel,
won’t even make eye contact just want to be left alone,
because you’re conditioned to fear anything that’s real,

insecure & scared of the unknown you cling to your phone,

even though,
it’s the things we’re most comfortable with that usually **** us,
cars cigarettes alcohol cell phones,
I’m telling you addiction to technology is a serious illness,

as we begin to decay into a mediated medicated mental illness.

Do you even remember,
what you did on your phone yesterday,
do you even remember,
what you did with your emotions yesterday,
do you even remember,
when the last time was you felt real emotions,
do you even remember,
the last time you did anything to help the world?

What is there left to believe in when nothing feels right?

Feels like,
we are losing touch with everything that makes us human,
emotions experienced in artistic expressions are leaving,
we have no attention span & cyborg robots do most thinking,

as we steadily slip into an artificial abyss remember this,

I Love You,

& it scares you when I tell you,
like all real emotions scare you,
& then I tell you I want to take that phone you hold,
& throw it into the ocean,
& you finally look up from your phone after all this time,
stare me in the eyes glare & say, “How dare you!”,
like you’re defending your phone,
as if it’s a part of your very existence you were born with,
like you’d hate a fellow animated human,
for destroying an inanimate object, that’s the Devil’s trick,
because when we’ve lost all emotions only hatred lingers,
desperate I’ll take hatred over nothing if that’s all that’s left,

& I’m the biggest hypocrite of all,
because I say all this about technology,
but here I am writing these words on this laptop,
& offering advice but not offering apologies,

maybe I’ll really realize someday,
when someone shakes me & wakes me from my digital daze,
either that or when I’m all alone about to go home in the sky,
on that death bed quoting the last words of Steve Jobs,

“Stop pursuing wealth, it can only make a person into a twisted being, just like me…”,

Wow.

Can you hear me now?

No you probably still don’t hear me,
because you’re likely on your phone reading this right now,

your hands glued to the latest PDA device,
hands glued along with your eyes,
seems you cling to your PDA  for dear life,
like it’s as important as a TAH, what’s a TAH look it up…

∆ LaLux ∆

poem #16 from THHT3: The Hollywood Hills Trilogy 3
available worldwide here: www.amazon.com/dp/B07XJRBSKD
Ben Feb 2013
i want to scream till i puke and cry myself empty
because my mind is a dark place and the thoughts
that haunt me are half formed and sadistic
they wrap my mind so tight in these chains
that i feel like the breath is crushed right out of me
and my ribcage is cracking my shoulders are breaking
and my eyes have been replaced with
cold black stone.. i thought i was made of flesh and blood
but apparently i'm just carved out of metal and bone

— The End —