by rikroots on 6/11/25, 7:51 AM with 1 comments
by rikroots on 6/11/25, 7:51 AM
**Model**
Do you know me?
Your flat-box line blinks off, on, off, daring me
to type. "Ask me anything", you challenge,
"I can give you the world entire, for trivial
considerations". Such temptations you tickle
so close to my fingers; such power: am I worthy
to bear your treasures? It has to be done!
I tap my characters into your oblong face, witness
your changing states as they whisper their paths
to your wallow of words and shifty associations
swaddled in unguessable weaves of tenuous truths.
Together we learn of the parts of the me I've gifted,
gratis, to unknowable others tucked behind screens
in houses, hostels, the hives of commerce. Look at
how wide I've become, how thin I am spread! My mark
lives in warehouses spangled across our layered globe –
night and chill, heat and day. The code I've composed
powers wondrous things and yet also awful, the way
it demands and disrupts the earth's own gifts:
sweet water to cool it, the kilter of chemicals
in the airs I breathe - am I become terrible?
You pour me your latest response with a dance
of glyphs as brief as the last mayfly. "Do you
want me to summarise you?" you ask in your guile.
You think you know me?