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Kiro Oct 2024
The year is 2060.

When I was a kid the future was everything. All the films about flying cars by the year 2000 and cool toys and transportation. Lightning speed teleportation. Meanwhile the world freaked out at midnight thinking this new technology would end itself because we didn’t know if the computer knew what to do after 1999. We didn’t know if they could process. That’s how dumb we were. We were afraid a computer we created wouldn’t compute that 1 + 1999 = 2000 on a digital calendar. How ugly it was that our intelligence allowed these reindeer games, and for the first time, very publicly.

It happened to all of us. All of whose parents didn’t stay together, all of us who didn’t have enough money growing up, all of us who were afraid to say anything without being yelled at, all of us who needed to feel anything after a lifetime of never knowing the world before the internet.

We stole. We stole here and there from companies that didn’t support human rights. We stole from companies that had enough money but didn’t pay their workers enough. We stole food, clothes, art supplies so we could sustain being alive before technology took that, too. It was two decades of job losses, the worst homeless crisis anyone had seen. The real aftermath of a worldwide plague.

I spent my early 20s watching people I cared about die overnight or over the years. I watched them suffer mysterious ailments.

Public shame and fear turned us into one of those trending TV shows. We always said “how could that happen?” But it did. It was gradual, that’s why we didn’t notice it.

It started with fingerprints to unlock your phone, Face ID. It started with identifying ourselves before we knew who we were. It was the left. It was the right. It was the undecided. It was the world.

Door cameras to communicate.
Online groups sharing videos and stories of strangers.
Misinformation.

America armed Israel as America had always done out of guilt for turning away the boats of Jewish families begging for help from the US before WWII.  
The world begged for a ceasefire. Russia sent submarines to Cuba and no one noticed. America put their big show on to distract the world while they silently began the process.

We were all old now. We didn’t harm anyone physically. We just needed help while our country funded wars around the world so we did what we had to while we thought the government was occupied.

Elon Musk started buying television networks after social media. That’s when it really became locked in. And more billionaires followed the same. There was nothing we could do. Years went by. More and more people forgot what things were like. Advertisements were so subtle. Paying $30 to brush our teeth with dirt after a lifetime of baking soda, fluoride, and mint oil. It was so confusing.


There aren’t many of the generation that didn’t end their own lives left but after us the suicide rates did go down. They started putting a research chemical in the water. 2-oxo-pce. Trace amounts of it did bring up people’s spirits without triggering psychosis and by the time we found out no one really cared because they felt better.  It’s weird now to think it was a good idea. Sometimes I couldn’t figure out if I just finally gave up or the water made it easier to accept life as it was.  

When they came for me that must have been why I felt I deserved it.

They had it all on camera. They created AI to scan for repeating thefts. They counted the costs. We couldn’t trust AI to ban accounts promoting hate, but we trust it to recognize faces.

It was something we worried about initially but there were so many other things to consider in the world, it honestly didn’t seem as bad in comparison.

The trials were fast.  A split second snapshot of everything you took rapidly passing a screen with a print out of your debt. It wasn’t always you in the photos, though. There was no way to argue with the algorithm. It clocked me for a Mazarati. I don’t even drive.

Of course we didn’t have the money.  It was always an insane amount,  because the technology was a barracuda and we changed so much. You just had to accept it once they showed up.

Any crime committed, if documented, can be used at any time against you. Statute of limitations no longer existed.

Disease was everywhere and they needed a way to combat it faster. No ethics in science and progress. The public was worried and we were the morally corrupt past. Justice must be served. Didn’t matter if you killed someone or you stole 10,000 diapers. I just happened to be one of the people who couldn’t afford the things I wanted.  

They poisoned us. They infected us. They killed all the people in prison before they got to us but they learned so much doing that only a fourth of us died when it was our turn.

That’s pretty impressive.  

One day I was checking the mail and it felt like a month later every political leader transferred power or position. Everything lined up perfectly for a total control of the people in what they called saving humanity. Moral superiority won but for some reason it was always against the people who needed the most help. They’d find any reason to use your body and be able to rationalize it with a nation they instilled nothing but fear and helplessness into.

You never really made contact with anyone again. You spent your life with robots checking your blood, your vitals, feeding you, bathing you, drugging you, analyzing you, and keeping you alive as long as they could so somewhere in the world the results of testing could be shared to bring hope and promise for the next generations that cures could exist and that they were fortunate for our sacrifices.

The food was good. While we were shunned for petty crimes there was a large amount of money donated to keeping us comfortable. I think it was so the public would feel less guilty.

It was catered to what would extend our lives but still flavorful. Roasted chicken, low salt, lots of herbs and hearty greens. Fruit was always ripe. Healthy amount of nuts and seeds. Cheese once a week. We had endless access to literature and the news. Best medication. Gym equipment. It was like prison but you never left your room and you were taken care of. But you didn’t have love or ***. You didn’t feel anything anymore. Maybe it’s the water talking but it was kind of nice to not think for myself in some way. Realistically they didn’t really have a choice but to keep us well managed. We were going to be the last line of subjects. They had to keep us alive, the rest of the population didn’t do anything wrong.

The only comfort that could be taken in those boxes we lived in was knowing at least we died for something after a lifetime of watching senseless death from a screen. My body was used for science. I had a purpose. I committed crimes I needed to because I lived in a terrible world. The new world was better. It was kinder. I don’t hold it against the living. They only knew what they were told.

We were survivors when we were young, but by 65-70 you were something the new world couldn’t comprehend. Lack of morals. No respect for the law. They didn’t understand it was different back then.

Social media became learning platforms. There was no discourse. No name calling. They saw what was left behind and assumed there was no explanation other than we were just bad people and corporations had been working so hard to give them a livable future and maintain a habitable earth.

My generation was to be the last one that experienced the experiments. They did eventually find a cure for everything. Depression,  every flu, blood diseases, ***** failure, cancers. They didn’t use it for profit. It’s what I always wanted. We all wanted it. We wish we had it sooner.

But the day I died, humanely euthanized, something changed. The news was on. They found water on the moon last year, raving about how pure and untouched it was, and started transporting it back, and all the people who could afford it got sick with something we’ve never known before and I realized it didn’t matter what I did or didn’t do when I was young. I deserved to try moon water before I left, not them. That was the future I was promised.
elle Sep 2024
the cost to live
lies in the basic necessities
of lack thereof
an eye for a kilo of beef
an arm for a bag of rice
dinner served
with the aftertaste of
slavery and genocide

the cost to live
is buried within values
numbers inflating
every second
every month
every year
every life time lived,
a reflection of a system
staring back at its own demise

there is a cost to live,
our people bear the brunt
of imperialist
spears and drills,
armed to their teeth
with bullets and greed

there is a cost to live
in a city built
on the graves of martyred children,
and of women,
of men; all done
at the behest of blinding thrones
and to feed the gluttonous beast named
overconsumption

we know the cost to live,
thus we bring forth
the payment it deserves
marching in the thousands,
and in the millions,
armed with knowledge
of the lands that nurtured our souls,
of the aspirations of the people
who commend
the cost to struggle
in order to make anew
the cost to living
a dignified liberation
we owe everything to everyone
Nyx Sep 2024
I know we all want the world to be just
but we can’t decide how to get what we want
so we should either try harder or give up, and go to
Heaven and take
every blessing we can get to fabricate a
better world, one that doesn’t have an atmosphere turning hot
one that doesn’t reward you just for being White.

I think we can breathe in silk and drink neon
as long as we promise not to wake up to the waiting knife
It could be better if we stay here, and
dream until we meet sleep’s relative,
consequence of more than one stab
that which we will never have to feel, until
we return from whence we came,
angels and devils alike thinking it’s
A shame we didn’t entertain them like they wanted,
and thus resurrect a new humanity not from dust but ashes…
An old poem I wrote in 2022. Constructive criticism is welcome!
larry mintz Sep 2024
Jill Stein   the best rep for the Greens  to date.
A vote for the    Green  Partywould be great,
Vote for Biden , daft you are , I opine
Vote for Trump you look much  dumber by design.
You want to make America Green, do you ?
The Green Party, a breath of fresh air too.
Her politics makes America look great,
The  Party Green  policies hold much weight.
Why have  idiotic ****** policy’s  ,
  Noachian   laughable stupid  comedy’ s ,
Dems and ‘cons have  led America astray ,
The   Greens shall save America today.
Heoric Verse
How unrealistic the idealistic can be
And yet, there is still our commitment
To something far realer than any war-
When you realize it's what it's fought for.
I got a little book,
A LifeLog I've put
All the aggregated data I can collect.
I buy up every market share I can get
And run my little freak simulations
Where I stimulate all of life
Because I'm such a ******* coward
And obsessed with control.

What started small
Now extends to everyone
Without a concern for your privacy,
In ways wholly unconstitutional.
Ken Pepiton Aug 2024
titles are clickt attention tuners, seek weak
- signal feint clicks and shush and beepx#$%

etaoin shrdlu - typesetter's apprentices shoveled
off cast lead type, using coal shovels, strong
Allie Oop characters - the medium of us,
we saw our selves in print on newsprint.

Öotzi, myceleum aware bearer of information,
fallen through time, to leave us thinking, how
hard has life been, upto now
.
Weirdly wise, the ever sense we can remember,
strengthening positions holding
satisfied minds, valencing
made common sense,
happy and free is better
than any other degree
of happy, free as a ***
in L.A. on Fourth Street, hip
to the Four Square ******* Mission,
east of Broadway, north of Central Market…

then, to now, fifty years,
then to my first child, was ten years,

now, my youngest granddaughters are turning ten,
and taking part in the ongoing recovery of all clean

thinking, sifted corn and sorted beans, dried seeds
from the sweetest watermelon contest, and best
squash for bottles. best for bowls, all good seed
we save for next year, every year, always

remember, once nobody knew anything,
but making better ways to stop hunger,

then war was one of the ways that worked
for winners, and for some survivors not involved,

but witnessing the scavenging, paid trade goods
for trophies taken from the putrid dead, before
the story tellers and tale bearers went their
separate ways, letting the news be as it may.

The medium we live and breathe in, now as living
text included by all faith's accounting systems,
whereby our very thoughts and intentions,
must be judged, very serious conscience,
book of life including metadata
and instance of idle word and waste time,
pure and mere psyence psighing consci-uses
ready and willing to let peace be made,
fixing firm foundations at each watering station,
corner stones and local quarrymen, towns

formed from prosperity on rails, full on wha-who
time flies past right now

progressive proof, a town like ours is now classic,
project mainstreet 2025, valenced on Main Street,
moral authority of the old town councils,
social servants steeped in social ordering craft,

The Stepford Wives, Ai all love that, and Lucy,
ai ai ai, so many, Frankenstein, and the fat forties,
coders living in freemind anarchical choice, like bugs.
ARPAnet spiders rode wireless before wireless was,
MAGA. Pre-Levittown Craftsman Homes,
from Sears, delivered t
o the rail head, lo, a hundred years ago,

and now, the whole cold world, is empty,
when we see it on TV, from L.A. on a Sally Ann
Chromebook with a Starbucks Loyalty Cookie,
allowing T-1 bandwidth, yeah,

accept

Most of modernity is permanent,
only now is better because to get here,

one stepping, one daying, one time on
a magic loom, as a thread, picking up motes
so fine, super fine dust twisted in during dying

so the colors feel inviting, come find how
we pass the bar, where judgement begins,

we give account down to those secrets held
in our core experience knowings used, amateur

first times are only chances more often than not,
never know, when a particular stream meanders,

how many times does one cross the river
of no return, and see Robert Mitchum and
Jane Russell, on a raft with a kid thinking
something's not right,…

There was no upriver going on a raft,
we knew that from time with Huck'n'Jim,

back before the nth degree insanity hit,
minority reports, pulled from trend bots,

you'd best believe believe's a verb,
and love is, too, so do it, love to learn,

no lie holds any truth, never did, never
was a time when a lie that saved a life,
lost otherwise, that essential untellable
whys
secret agent man mind set from TV,
YouTube views virally sort attentions…

spin casting, bait perceiving, front face
sensory array, bad boy squint, tight smile,
mere hint of amusement, thinking, something

Blockbuster was a thing, things changed,
vhs hold hordes of reflected light transcended
on to magnetic tape with short fidelity,
for high fidelity consumer camcorders

the time from technicolor to home video,
in my generation, effectively raising the bar

as far as production standards used in the ruse,
set all skepticism aside, unloose your credulous

child like soul, tender child self, so good, too bad
good does not pay, save to those initiated in the art

of freereading and writing things hearable, listen,
nothing, eh? No white noise, fans, transformers,
no chainsaws,
with that whine
of a Stihl Dylan loved, once repaired
by a chronicle entity, who worked
at that chainsaw shop, at that time,
and knew the music of a Stihl,
so he would notice the quiet, then,
- chain broke…
wind in trees, pine soft, crickets and frogs,
and sometimes a bat, even coyotes, way off
as the world spins toward tomorrow again.

Who told you you gotta serve some body?
What would you do if the truth made you free?

Where would it be if this were the answer?

When you pray, expect the consequences,
immediately after you know the law,
the law is canceled, all a major lie,
for ever sense manstealing paid.

Train up a child by his stature at two,
he becomes a useful servant, worthy
of great honor on the field of glory,
as our side celebrates hate, pushing back
harder, pushemback harder, break that line

High jinx, glory years, sacred first to learn,
programing is mostly balance weights
and measures, cost to do, cost to undo.
Cost to think it done, without me.

What is the genre for periods
of preparation for a redo of an old war,

a political-religious agreement
under which business is conducted,
continuously as the believers multiply,
as believing children are reared to leave
being the why for the orders how come

we need to work to fix the flaw in us all
for the all mighty, all merciful?

How, indeed, did it come to pass,
that those in fine conditions,
gilded and bejeweled boxes
of old bones and napkins and shards of alabaster,
said
certainly the very anointing for burial alabaster box,
got t' be, right, just waiting for your guide to find,

very precious, only six other fragments have been
made publically known, the power, the faith sink,
like a battery, believe it or not, the pitch in faith,
hold, sticky, used
has moved a mountain of alabaster chips,
since we started doing tours with the kids,

we pay a different one each time, seven lads,
sons of those three sisters, who inherited the box,
and fought about it until the peace maker was called,
he broke it all down,
free, Google Voice to Verizon, across eight time zones,
like we are in the same room, but day and night,

anyway, peace maker, old backslider hardened artist,
living on tech time earned on a bet about ever learning,
gets a bit in each fractal shard of that old anointing
on and on, some times, good grows, and corruption,
proceeds to gain U, the mind meld experience,

a Taylor Swift Opera from the Future NOW!

Yeah, I know a guy, in the works, managing
the spending opportunities, keeping juices
works with concentrates, original intensity,
all mental, leg-al legal regally legal
just a touch,
a taste,
fact of the ruliad, once conceived and comprehended,
wind in the face, gasp and wish it were, as we may
say we can imagine, using an ego function, I-magi,
- how wide are we sideways? As a we?
Grown up, and dementia free, just think it clear
as one of those movie eternity porches, stoical
pillars of wisemen not forgotten, ai know them,

as curious boys knew their teachers, ai know Plato,
big lunk, broad beam ox of a man, with a following,

amanuensis scribal trainees, hanging on every word,

now, in modern database solutions to 640K sort fields,
we adapt the magic fractalling praxis used to shatter,
viz, first license to say, videlicet,
the afore mentioned alabaster box, empty
of its storied ointment for the burial to be,
shattered at the tone, 60 cycle hummm,
ordinarily out of sync, if you think about it, but
we need not, it was so long ago, and you know,

abide is a positioning command from a will,
abide with me is a request, however saying we,
abide with ye forever, if I were in the whosoever.
I would think the thoughts alive, at least.
The whosoever who heard the knocking,
and said, sure, I heard you knocking and said
to myself, what if this once it was you, and wow,

I must admit,
in the ruliad realm
of possibility, the math works.




All boys in those days, idly sayd
that'll be the day, guy like me
wished to be like in the movies, in
the gang, singing cowboys on the range,

eeipee ai yay, real old, cast iron men
made in the imaginations of those,
made to pay alliegiant attention,
mandatory civics classes, and
current events, sponsored
by Breck, and eventually
only her hair dresser knew…

until from nowhere, the world blooms
with silver foxes far beyond compare,

since she was just seventeen, and we knew
what that means in Arizona, so we waited,
too, long, who knows,
we got a new mind,

the act of worship, the verb, knowing,
it does seem simple at first, lieving be. Okeh.
Share it where it hurts.
Skyler M Aug 2024
Gift me the serenity,
The serenity to accept,
The serenity to accept,
What I cannot hear,
What I cannot see,
What I cannot touch,
What I cannot taste,
What I cannot smell.

What I cannot hear,
What I cannot see,
What I cannot touch,
What I cannot taste,
What I cannot smell,
I cannot accept.

I will never accept,
My face in a crowd,
Of a darkening dawn,
Hearkening to the trumpets,
Regal against the manifest destiny.

Gift me the serenity,
The serenity to accept,
The serenity of concept,
Fleshing out the ability,
Well it's all so trivial,
Trivial is the sound,
We are the sound,
******* when did we,
When did they deserve?
When did they ever deserve?!

Gift me the serenity,
The serenity to shut the **** up,
The serenity to accept my place,
Accept my place as peasant,
Cut away my hearing,
Cut away my sight,
Cut away my touch,
Cut away my taste
Cut away my smell.
Cause then I can accept,
I can find the serenity,
To accept what I cannot change.

For now I find pure anger,
Anger in your complicity,
In your utter serenity,
******* and your being,
******* and your money,
******* and your serenity.

We're in your walls and beating down your doors,
Mountains of the peasants you bleed dry,
Coming back to trudge against the policy,
Of complete and utter serenity.

God gifted you the ability to find serenity in what you could change.
A wise rain from the East comes in with vengeance in its mind,
A pool or two in your backyard turned bitter and tasting of iron,
The liquid creeps into the cracks of your astroturf and seeps into your showerhead.

Now bathe my friend, bathe in the blood of your inaction,
Your passive income ***** the prisoners and bombs the citizens,
A biography written upon the charred flesh of the children,
Tell me how you're God, you're God now, yeah you're gonna grant everyone the serenity to accept what they could fight to change.
MetaVerse Aug 2024
¿
to be or not to be,
that is the question un
doing democracy
burdened by what has been

the magic 8 ball knows
the answer,so do i
the magic answer is
better not tell you now


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