By E.
I sit here waiting on their call
When they will ask and tell and
Make the call.
You won’t want my advice on how to help myself
And you won’t ask twice
These questions designed to determine
How to help me
How to understand my mind
Or, perhaps, just the symptoms
Of that yet not named,
Others having not fit,
It remains.
Three diagnoses with
Three question marks
Where words have failed
And being half-truths –
A symbol is put in place.
A symbol of uncertainty;
Of the unknown;
Or the not-quite-sure.
The boat still unsteady in the relentless waves.
The ocean of thoughts
And memories
And phrases
And symbols.
That even the visuals becomes blurred –
Smudged into mixes of colours,
Of certain brushstrokes –
Taking up space as
Nothing else is left.
Words and sounds blind the whole self
As the picture melts even further into
Mush.
But mush is still an object
Even when I cease to be the subject.
Subjective and objective –
Blurred like paint on the canvas.
Truth was the biggest irony of all
And I expect it to remain that way now.
A false confidence,
And ignorance,
To allow myself the boldness of the
Power to predict;
Hypothesise.
I was not a scientist
And now science may as well be
A floppy disc –
Still an amazement yet
Unable to adapt its way
Into usefulness –
Easily taken apart.
It still filled a space once
And fitted,
With a mechanical snugness,
Into machine
And fingertips.
The warmth of the inner-workings,
Through the plastic outer-shell,
Bore a distinct scent of
Shiny decay.
Had I been less conditioned,
To see this as my tool,
I may have turned to the
Abject bemusement
Of a child:
Is this alive?
A hypothesis
Explored through categorisation –
Features of living things:
Humans.
Animals.
And plants.
The encasing black plastic
Did not allow for a
Heartbeat
To be felt –
Hidden
Somewhere underneath.
Yet, this didn’t completely
Rule out
The existence of life.
And, if the thought experiment –
Dreamt up in imagination;
But explored with rationality –
Had inconclusive-conclusions –
Then what?
So, a computer is between
The living and
The inanimate object –
It’s a hybrid?
Not a word I would have used.
I’m not sure I had, or have,
The language to identify;
Or name;
Or discover;
Or, the most arrogant of all:
Create.
In the beginning there was:
The word.
The rest is written history.
In my beginnings there was
No words.
Not for the infant subject
At least.
The words,
And the rules,
And the knowledge
Was taught
Through and from
Words:
Written;
Spoken;
Told before.
Before the beginning?
That is a sub-truth.
And Truth is now a word
I use with much reluctance
As it’s very form,
And even the pattern of my hand
To build it’s existence on my page,
Creates such a confliction
Within me.
A microcosm of the difficulties had
Trying to maintain
Some sense of
Shared experience
With those involved in
Modern life,
Yet,
Not letting go of the
Critical paranoia
That the
Post-modern –
Scratch that –
Post-human
Demands of my every
Thought.