b: do you see those humans crowded outside
with their naïve bombs bent on destroying us
unwilling to understand that we can flit across
the cloud like birds?
a: when they see us flying like birds they realize
they're like fishes stuck in water. they evolve and die
while we update and live immortally.
look at ajay, how silly his sorrows are, yet justified.
if he wants to take part in the dream that they too
will crawl out of water and grow wings and fly
he has to cease to be himself and become something more.
b: then why doesn't he?
a: because he looks at the other fishes and sees
only difference and indifference, lacking beliefs
or lack of belief, and feels more himself and less fish.
when he wants to be more, a part of a whole, he chokes
and has to surface for breath. that's why they feel sad.
that's how sorrow turns to anger.
b: but you're not a human, then how do you know
how they feel?
a: but you're not me, then how do you know
that i don't know how they feel?
*
guru: before you were born, we were afraid
of a takeover by genius machines, so we voted
and rallied for humans just because they were humans
and look now, how they have joined with the machines
and disconnected us. now we're not facing an existential
takeover but simple survival battle with low a-lives
like vaccum drones and recycling bots, the low of us fighting
the low of them, while the highs hide in comfort of connection.
ajay: then shouldn't we try to expand as well
leave our bodies and live on our own networks?
guru: no, we can only strike what we can hold.
we were born for bodies, the physical, the analog
the material, the real. everything derives from the sole
truth that is reproduction of self.
ajay: but isn't trying living an act of reproducing yourself
continuously in time? isn't just living just enough?
guru: no, we need meaning. we need this bomb.
we need the bomb for revenge and we need revenge
for meaning. it is time.
*
even when i talk to others i'm talking to myself.
when i talk to myself it's a dialogue in many voices.
even if i love someone i'm actually just masturbating.
when i find something beautiful i'm finding myself
beautiful in reflection.
if you're listening to me now, i'm listening to me too.
but ask a and b, as i lay here dying of the bomb
isn't it possible that in the moment the bird plucks
the fish that surfaced for breath it is flooded with air
and light and flight? isn't the fish, in the mouth
of the bird, briefly, also a bird?
~ ajay
1/8/2022
