"simulations" poems
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.
Oct 15, 2017
Oct 15, 2017 at 7:42 AM UTC
.
*asks the one in the $9 Craigslist chair,
legs crossed like a philosopher
mid-way through a YouTube binge
on dark matter
and dopamine fasting.*
He thinks it’s profound.
It’s not.
It’s a shrug in a trench coat.
A crisis dressed up in code.
An old fear wearing digital cologne.
If this is a simulation—
***what the **** are we simulating?***
Heartbreak?
Minimum wage despair?
The number of times I check my phone
hoping it’s her?
Is it
a stress test for gods,
a beta for consciousness,
a joke?
Because if someone coded this—
they should be fired.
Or worshipped.
Or sued.
Where’s the patch notes,
the exit key,
the server room in the sky?
Where’s the moment it glitches
and someone finally says,
“Oops, our bad—
you weren’t meant to feel
all of that.”
You talk about the veil of illusion
but you still cry in parking lots.
You still ghost your therapist.
You still love people
who don’t text back.
You bleed,
you ache,
you spiral—
whether you’re made of atoms
*or ******* pixels.*
Your god wears headphones.
Your sacred text is a Stack Overflow thread.
Your heaven is a loading screen.
Your hell is just
Monday.
You pray in 1080p
to a silent DevOps deity
who hasn’t pushed an update
since the Bronze Age.
This isn’t philosophy.
It’s cosplay for cowards.
It’s a way to sound deep
without touching dirt.
Without risking faith.
Without changing anything.
Because if it’s a sim,
you don’t have to care.
If it’s a sim,
you don’t have to try.
You can just sit there,
scrolling.
Wondering if the fire
is ray-traced.
But here, the only questions that matter:
Does it hurt?
Do you love?
Can you lose?
Because if the answer is yes—
you’re in it.
Whatever it is.
Simulation or not.
Aug 5, 2025
Aug 5, 2025 at 5:12 AM UTC
A hand on a throat, where if all fingers touch, the throat
turns to ash. The villain of an anime I now watch
clutches the hero with his middle-finger aired
before the vital moment. I jump
on holiday off a cliff
and my chest stumbles with simulations. My body angled
poorly as I could slap headfirst. I was warned that my feet
should sink first if I merely fall. If I dive, my fingers
should first touch the water. I am depressed
the months before. College student, America. So far off, so cold
from the landlock of my birth. And the summer
study-abroad, double-abroad. In Italy
I was watching the Creation show itself on old ceilings
in marble-rooms, looking for some culture
that might have been ours if not for the pillagings that brought
gold and bodies to shape that gold into buildings like this. So I jump
and fall. And shiver emptily. It is the same feeling as the nights
on the bed thinking of futures without this self. Thinking as if
I did not exist. Ignored emails from therapists. And here *this
feeling!*: it made me want to live. So I jump again
on the higher ledge. My friend afterwards asks if I'm okay.
I'm shaking slightly. I'm without words. I laugh
with the same absence as any birth. A baby's confused cry
without tears. A long way down. What blue-green water,
as if dug for in the earth and sold for courtyard dances.
It glimmers all over my body, frizzes
up my hair as my ****** curls soak it, squeezes it down my face,
down towards my neck like fingers.
The villain walks away. The next time the hero sees him
he should be careful. He will have decided to **** me by then.
Dec 4, 2018
Dec 4, 2018 at 11:51 PM UTC
with what sense does
this sea of read
pirouette on?
the soot leaving black
blotches on the ****** sheets,
lampposts do not complain
of sudden twitches
as cacophonously, a line
of machines with their ravenous
machinisms create a seam of
crimson to a slender
rose's architecture.
i leave my engine on
so as to hand this road
my readiness,
Ely Buendia on the tattered radio
leaks outside the ajar windows,
chasing the dream of rearing
movements
as my flesh remains dreamless,
stationary.
there is a sequined gathering here.
erratic simulations of
naked eyes pierce the musk
of the austere air's gravity
of existence.
all of us
occupying space
and our attendance is our
sigh of dismay as our homes
decompose in waiting,
as our beds remind us
of our body's aging clamor,
as our ineluctable senescence
opens the dungeons of our frailties
with its trembling, wrinkled hands.
we are our waiting's consummation
as we are left here,
wary of our precise proprioception,
left in
the tongue-tied dark.
Sep 16, 2015
Sep 16, 2015 at 9:25 AM UTC
*Serenity Echoing In Reverse,
Stagnant Resolutions Choking Her Universe,
Submerging Her Dreams Into A Sterilized Verse.
Sedated In Perpetual Twilights,
Mechanical Love & ****** Satellites,
She Whispers Essences Of Kryptonite.
Victim To A Perpetual Reaction,
She Transforms Into A Violet Abstraction,
Echoing Prismatic Deflections.
Technician To Her Own Serenades,
She Embraces Her Heartache Blockades,
Overdosing On Intoxicating Escapades.
Evoking Constellations Of His Ionized Memories,
She Overdoses On Comatose Reveries,
And Spectral Illusions Of Synthetic Stories.
Amplifications So Sacred & Profane,
Simulations Raving Into Codependent Stains,
Fragmentations Entranced In Her Bulletproof Frames.
Cherub Starlight & Everlasting Gaze,
Transitions Fusing Into Astral Maze,
The Essence Of Ecstasy Of His Sentiments Sways.*
- 04:27AM
Mar 11, 2017
Mar 11, 2017 at 5:57 PM UTC
I
I am in
sin
in absence
in simile
in a simulacrum
of simulation
In simulation
lies my sin
my string of simulations
of conversations
relations
with a simile
another simulacrum
of him
Feb 28, 2013
Feb 28, 2013 at 4:58 PM UTC
Awaken, pyre
From my soul
Cease your sleep
Set my spirit ablaze
Poetess inside
You’ve reaped my emotions
Stolen my Muse
Return! Return my heart!
I will not endure once more
Your years of poetic midnight!
Lost in the darkness you left for me
Encircled my false shame
While you slept
Did you have a nice nap,
O, Princess Inspiration?
How could you dare
Leave my spirit
In such dank cellars of misery
Living on phony clones of yours?
Shame, shame
For deserting all that was once ours
Together
Awaken, pyre!
Accept that I have
Woken from your poetic sleep
Only to see with eyes filled with fury
You had left me with
Only horrid simulations of yourself!
Awaken, pyre!
Dormancy of your spark,
No longer!
I was fooled-
Betrayed by your tricks
Of utter betrayal
I must hold you as my own
Once again I will embrace whatever
Design I find within you
Oh
Evil
Inspiration
Awaken!
Jun 26, 2011
Jun 26, 2011 at 11:55 AM UTC
There were happy times while at Home, where the sun
Licked the rims of our glasses and sent wayward strands of light
Streaking across an almost-empty tabletop,
Save for a slight shifting of sand in the only hourglass
I would ever need to own.
There were sad times too, don't forget
Like whenever the storms intruded on our mid-afternoon slumbers
And sent our dreams flying in a saturated mess of
Unfinished riverboat cruises and superhero simulations;
Underneath it all, though, it became impossible not to try it again.
We're going to return here someday, paying close attention to
A world that had preserved itself for the sake of preservation
A life that had spent its last weekends alone on the edge of the sea
Where everything within it collected and became a mosaic of
Saturated dreams and hourglasses cut in two -
Sand mixing with sand.
Apr 4, 2011
Apr 4, 2011 at 12:03 PM UTC
the pictures from the ISS
make it very clear
to everybody with a TV screen
or a computer
our earth is a globe
and blue
and finite
and in a delicate balance
determined by more factors than even
our most sophisticated computer simulations
can so far figure out
it makes you wonder
why
of all people
those who surely own more than one TV screen
and a couple of notebooks & cetera
are the ones who deny
that they are
destroying our rain forests
polluting our rivers and seas
poisoning our environment
ruining our lives
deadening our minds
maybe
if they dare to set forth
even a step or two
from their isolated gated habitats
and walk in the real world
they have created
they are able to begin
to understand
Jul 12, 2016
Jul 12, 2016 at 5:11 PM UTC
mutant mannequins
stare from the shop window
visions of Venus de Milo
awaiting the hour to come alive
indecipherable simulations
anonymous
yet they have about them
a lacerating urgency
an elliptical and oblique
consciousness
that emits the light
of relative thought
establishing a symbiosis
of non gender
that stimulates the color of dreams
in unleashed silent appraisal
Feb 13, 2013
Feb 13, 2013 at 1:30 PM UTC
up late
sat upright
i contemplate
is it too late?
how much of a state is my mind state?
i feel stuck in time
am i stagnant or am i fluid?
i wanna leap off the bed or the earth
what is the symbolic meaning of a birth?
is there even such a thing?
if so, what is the symbolic meaning of death?
we all die
is that the symbol?
is it a parable?
who knows
your guess is as good as anyone elses
we pretend all day long
of our competencies
truth is, such endeavours
limit our ability to see
how the world is in raw form
we build our lives and wishes
within a simulation
we all subscribe to the simulation
in our own way
only till we own the simulations of our mind
can we really see
the ethereal and rich nature of reality
reality is not fixed
it cannot be named like a person
it is bigger than me or you
or any organism that inhabits it
let's have some humility
for Christ's sake
Nov 13, 2020
Nov 13, 2020 at 11:38 AM UTC
Ceaseless ****** of the future,
Weaver of possibility,
Engine of chance and
“What would it be like?”
That endured the infinite
Hallucinations
Simulations
and recitations
Of its own creation
Never knowing why -
Just falling endlessly
And into place -
Who said:
I’d like to be on high ground
When the end comes
Not for safety but
to watch a while
whilst it tears apart
And then finally
unravels when my eyes close,
The thing of things
That orchestrated the
Mutiny of the heart
In those senseless
Undergrounds
Stairwells
Attics of sanity,
The cracks in the hologram,
As all of life were truly hollow
Jan 22, 2013
Jan 22, 2013 at 3:45 AM UTC
milbrightlions of December —
you come announced in multiplicity.
even the night-herald blooms through
the beams of astounded simulations.
buoyantly uttering a word
of light, stilling itself in the sky,
unasked for.
surmounting the Narra and the mangrove,
sieged to a halt in its exactitude
like the uncomplicated machination
of what makes fire simmer in a wick.
all of its brazenness hearten
in easily toppled altitudes — even our
battlements scar our unexplained
liminality we grieve at first glance.
airless are the spaces we lean on,
testing their capacities. shrills bloom
clearer. our mouths plump and glazed.
our flesh hurtle all incarnadine, all true
unlike the twining of roads lit like
faces in the marketplace —
a dynasty of brokenness.
Dec 3, 2015
Dec 3, 2015 at 6:17 AM UTC
Blessings bestow on your faved Ruby Drink
And toast to another New Year's Best Sight
You're Growing, my Man; Smiles pour to the Brink
For you to Sip to Earth's Flavoured Delight
Sweets be Candies crushed; Simulations Free
Equal your Gaming Aspect in response
Bequeath your own Growing Theme by decree
Model your Bro's Working Model enhance
Yet Best to your Shape be such Good Advise
For now His Sterling Hand made you Unique
Bearing Fruits of Friends your own Charm will Spice
And cause the Jester flip his Cards oblique.
Enjoy your Day now. That Promise you earned
Dad's Smile on your Face; His Best Morals learned.
[HAPPY BIRTHDAY, BENJAMIN!]
May 13, 2013
May 13, 2013 at 2:08 AM UTC
By Arcassin Burnham
Every aspect of what reality doesn't have to end up in flames,
Lying to ourselves about what we really want in life and what it could gain,
You might ace the test , you might new car, but what do you think is real,
Simulations been proven in time , over and over , as long we know we'll be fine,
Let go of the past mistakes,
Let go of earth as it breaks,
In the mind,
The shell will crumble from behind,
The skull where it is too divine,
Guess it's where I'm headed,
If it's a good direction,
Can't ruin my sessions,
If I sleep better maybe it'll blossom,
Talking about the pineal,
The flames still burn without any
Tutorial.
Mar 20, 2018
Mar 20, 2018 at 11:29 AM UTC
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.
Aug 26, 2024
Aug 26, 2024 at 2:12 PM UTC
Shifting sleep, the seconds creep
Creep
Creep
Silently they pass by me
Treadmill thoughts, going nowhere but still moving
Thought, the most common form of illusion
What I could be doing, the time that I've been losing
Time, another fine example of confusion
What sorcery could order me to disengage now
Tranquilize the heavy eyes and guide the body back down
High strung bow, pull another arrow from the quiver
Draw it to the shoulder shoot it straight into the river
Useless
Fruitless
Pressure on the cracks
Rearview glances, but there's no tires on the tracks
My palms are too small for the things I try to grasp. I relinquish temporarily the need to draw a map
Futile simulations of my eyelids shutting
I conceive of bigger dreams while my eyelashes are jumping
Nov 14, 2015
Nov 14, 2015 at 8:35 AM UTC
I don’t have stories to tell anymore.
Maybe because I talk with myself less and talk to you more.
I walk to the car, to work, back to the car, into the house,
always an invisible string, a compass, a radar, looking for you.
There used to be stories, a string tied to a fantasy, a compass pointing into a future
I do not know if I should dream of or want.
There’s this undying want
That is hard to ignore anymore.
When I think about the future
All I think is “more,”
And I don’t know if more means me and you
And two kids and that white and wood paneled ocean house.
Take, for example, my own childhood house.
That was a place that filled me with heavy want.
Though we had everything we needed, I suppose, most children like me and you
Don’t follow our parents’ footsteps anymore
And we don’t see keeping up with the Joneses as anything more
Than a long-dead, rotted-out American Dream kind of future.
Where is the future
In a two-car-garage white house?
I know it’s not about the house, it’s more
About the people in it and being comfortable and I want to want
That future and see value in it, and oh the laughs we’d have around the kitchen table. But anymore
I can’t lie, I want to run and run and run away from me and from you.
I’ll use the cliché: it’s not you,
It’s me and my obsession with the future.
I don’t think I am ever awake in the present anymore.
I’m always up ahead and there are two simulations I play with. That one with the house
And the one where I run and I run, alone, wherever I want
And honestly, honestly, I don’t know which one I want more.
But couldn’t they have guessed? The more
I fear losing everything which is you
The more I want
To play by my rules and **** the future.
So in another imagining, they find me in the bathroom of this house.
My heart isn’t beating anymore.
I imagine there’s something more in the future
Other than you or running or a white-wood house,
But I don’t have stories to tell anymore. I don’t want to look there anymore.
Jun 18, 2018
Jun 18, 2018 at 12:16 PM UTC
I do not like the cell collective
overall, I find it ineffective.
It makes me want to pull out my hair.
The information that's on there
has little to nothing to do with the course,
and requires searching in an outside source.
I am not paying my lab fees
to do simulations that are like these.
Please discontinue to use this in class.
Ask “Would you do it again?" I'd say “Nah, I pass"
Apr 16, 2018
Apr 16, 2018 at 10:08 AM UTC
By Arcassin Burnham
...i could..
i could love you...
i could love you better..
Places you would've loved to go , even the avenues,
Remembered all that you are and what you do,
Heartaches in life,love i had a few,
almost went crazy over you,
to me you're Something new..
i could love you better than he ever has in his life,
sacrificing everything for you baby,you could be my wife,
In this life its give and take,
Gonna have to get your way,
i just want my way to be in your direction
just to see your pretty face,
you're a drug,you're not a phase,
you're the only one that meets all my attractions,
you,
love,
to,
the,
best of your abilities when you've been sighted,
In this thing that we call life,
Wanna be that man in your life,,
you're the only one that i have ever like...
i'll do my best to do right by you,
your the guiding force in my virtues,
simulations make me more into you,
doing things we wouldn't do,
free as a bar stool,
i could love you better than he ever has in his life,
sacrificing everything for you baby,you could be my wife...
In this life its give and take,
Gonna have to get your way,
i just want my way to be in your direction
just to see your pretty face,
you're a drug,you're not a phase,
you're the only one that meets all my attractions,
you,
love,
to,
the,
best of your abilities when you've been sighted,
In this thing that we call life,
Wanna be that man in your life,,
you're the only one that i have ever like.
Apr 18, 2017
Apr 18, 2017 at 10:16 AM UTC
And I’ll sweep it all under the rug
And I’ll lie awake, not at night.
And I’ll twist all your words you gave me
So they don’t come out as lies.
And I’ll justify the actions.
Your threats. Your patterns. Your hands.
Around my throat while I’m sobbing
And caving into every demand.
And I’ll lie awake at night.
I’ll lie, lie and lie.
On my back sometimes.
And sometimes to my own mind.
And I’ll answer all the questions
With no emotion behind the words
Building a wall barricaded to prevent
A glimpse of all this hurt..
I’ll lie awake in the morning
And during the day and evening
Long into the night
Until I numb the feeling.
Until it’s all disguised.
Until you can’t tell a smile from a frown
Until my fingers stay steady
And nobody can see how
How my heart is broken
How I dont feel like I could.
How my visions are simulations
And my reality is blurred.
How my mind goes to a place at night
At the times I get to myself
And I’m left to feel my feelings
But they never actually get felt.
Excuses for the hate
Reasons for the lies
Justification for the gut feeling
When there’s nowhere left to hide.
Jul 11, 2022
Jul 11, 2022 at 3:21 AM UTC
Winds
••
Somewhere
A man stands
••
(a man is standing is it you I see
From the shadows
Emerging?)
••
Wind
••
Images
••
They say a child shall appear to save the world
••
A child has appeared to save the world but he lies dying in a foreign land
---
Lies dying on the street
---
The murderd child
••
•
Days and days and are we even here at all?
••
Mutilated bodies
••
Mutilated
--
Wind
••
Everybody talks of love
••
Everybody sells their soul
••
Simulations of people roam the cloud like structure of our barren-ness
••
In hushed tones
We talk of talking someday
••
Do you love me!
Am I even here?
••
Wind
••
Breathe
••
Maybe
••
Or not
••
She sits on her bed and cuts herself
••
Alive?
Already dead?
••
The light is shining
Shining
••
•
(That's one possibility)
Nov 15, 2013
Nov 15, 2013 at 11:57 AM UTC
10mgs,
20mgs.
One,two,three.. day after day.
All just to keep this artificial smile on display.
Days drag out and the little stars that twinkled in our eyes now replaced by black holes.
Our soulless bodies sinking like broken bottles in the ocean.
The happy memories that haunted our minds nearly gone, the goosebumps we got when we remembered our first kiss are no more. Bodies numb.
This feeling,this curse; inevitable.
Every child born after condemned to a lifetime of synthetic happiness.
In capsules of sea foam green,and custard yellow. To be taken like our favorite candy.
The amount being consumed will become ungodly leaving hollowed shells and the walls to talk to.
Only the last glimmer of light in your pretty little head can save you.
Every memory.
Every emotion colliding like a kaleidescope of color.
The thoughts of him,thoughts of her.
The voices...
Another simulation complete.
Jun 25, 2018
Jun 25, 2018 at 1:12 AM UTC