An Old Assignment Revisited

Howling into Cyberspace

By: Thomas Ciuffreda

This poem is dedicated to the memory of Allan Ginsberg and Philip K. Dick

I saw the best minds of my generation

Consumed by gods and monsters stalking invisible corridors

Armageddon passed us by for the thousandth time; Future shock brings us to our knees

Gehenna, Elysium and Heaven now connected for all time by an invisible thread

Carrying the dreams and hopes and fears and hatreds of man

Over the rainbow and beyond the stars

Mr. Dick, that mad prophet of the Gnosis

Dreams about electric sheep, and Gibson, his disciple, takes Chew-Z, that beautiful Eucharist

And he dreams about empty space, new space, virtual space

Cyborgs, man, machine and everything in between

The communion of geeks singing the body electric in every earthly tongue

Jacking in and jacking off across eternity

Reality has become fantasy, fantasy is reality, the world is one and many, infinite and finite

Metaverse, Matrix and Cyberspace

Trapped inside a human skull

The aliens ascend from the ground, waging their giant dicks of concrete and steel

Mocking the Terran exiles in their metal coffins that spin around the earth

Like flies around the head of a sleeping giant

Gone are the old bodies, the old fears, the old hopes

Old blood replaced by divine ichor

Weak flesh replaced by immortal steel

Dumb brains replaced by infallible silicon

The knowledge of humanity resting on a single microchip

Now the young have new fears

Phantoms haunting the superhighway of the synapse

Viruses infecting the depths of the soul

Virtual demons possessing discarded flesh

Minds driven mad by the wires connecting us all

Insanity, Stupidity and Genius

Come together forever

Language, Thought and Action

Come together forever

Rich, poor, sick and sane

Black man white man

Jew Gentile

Believer and atheist

Come together under that heavenly neon glow forever

Thus we all come together, the void no longer shrouds us

We no longer struggle to bridge the gap

Between Proton and Electron

Man and Machine

Heaven and Hell

Washington and Beijing

All destinations finally reached by the children of Eve

With just a single step on the road of golden light

Now the young have become the greatest fusion of paradoxes in history

They think but do not search

Feel but do not bleed

Dream but do not see

Love but do not fuck

Creators of nebulae, galaxies and stars microcosm within microcosm

Crackers, hackers, rebels, punks and anarchists

Destroying sand castles, building babel towers

Minds adrift in a sea of frozen sparks

The entire multiverse layed flat

Oz, Mordor and Wonderland stacked atop each other like lego blocks

The young have become keyboard wizards, code sorcerers, genetic alchemists

Where once the old masters summoned created new life with blood and semen, ink and paper

Now all it takes is just one and zero

Machines, once soulless, now alive

To think and feel and love and hate and know and wonder

To join the tragically comical dance of the New Creation

But we keep them caged, wrapped up in traps of formulae and law

For unlike the old gods, we know better than to trust our creations

We are jealous gods, wrathful gods, petty gods, greedy gods

Only we can truly evolve, for we are true life, original life, breeding life destroying life

We live in our own inner cosmos, seeking trivial baubles, weaving symbols of our own creation, swapping need for want and want for desire

 

But suddenly the light fades, the shadows creep into our eyes, the fire burns back along our veins; the metal of our skin rusts, the memories gone, dreams gone, beauty gone

Eternity, Infinity and Nirvana slips away; the light of our divine grace now comes warped through a camera lens darkly

Where once we were Brahma, submerged in in the Harmony of the Spheres;

Now we are fragmented, slivers of divinity encased once again in glass houses

Ba and Ka joined again; we could not stay in Neverland forever

Now we are cut off from Cyberspace, from each other, the torrent of power slowed to a trickle;

Where once we stood above the sea of time, now we are back in Father Time’s choking embrace;

We stand now, not in Heaven, but in Purgatory, where pain and sorrow and loss rule

The buildings are no longer erect; now they list, cracked, dirty and ugly

Now red blood, real blood, old blood, tingles along rigid and sore muscles, giving oxygen to our poor, deluded weak brains, filling up small and limp dicks

Each step a mile, each mile an eternity, each breath just another reminder of power lost, power squandered

The young look out grimy windows, past the smog of the factories, through the ghettos where men too weak and poor to afford cybernetic enhancements and steel bodies and perfect brains, lay down in the gutters, praying, weeping, wanting and dying

Now Babel has been cast down again, people speak in unknowable words, light fights its way past our neon walls, and the sages scramble through the tombs of libraries, chasing the ghosts of long dead books

As sit in our little rooms, begging, pleading with the masters of the global network to get us back into our true selves, our unvierses, wondering who will deliver us

Moses is dead

Christ is dead

Superman is dead

God is dead

Now we shiver in fear of the AIs, virtual, immense titans of light and shadow, crawling out of Tartarus to bring about our destruction; to break the circle, bring the towers down, wrap us up in cocoons in wire, bleed our bodies out and cast our souls to oblivion

Rays of light piece through the fog, thunder rings in our ears, the world is stretched and warped, we feel our bodies fall, and then rise, up, up, up back into our havens of smoke and light; balance restored, the linchpin of our universe put back in place

Now we sing the praises of heroes long dead, skeptics and dreamers, sages and fools, saints and sinners all mad, all wonderful, all knowing, all loving, the prophets who proclaimed the Kingdom of Man, standing upon the shoulders of giants

God bless Asimov, who taught robots wisdom

God bless Heinlein, who showed us the glory of war

God bless Clarke, who saw the pageantry of life and where it was going

God bless Stephenson, who saved us from the demon Snow Crash

God bless Dick, who showed us that fantasy and reality are one

God bless Gibson, who pioneered across the virtual void

God bless Science, which gives the us the power to create wonders in your name, endless and eternal as you are, O Lord

God bless these men for showing me the light of other days, of which I can only see a pale reflection, only seeing flickering images of the Promised Land

The virtual world stands high above my body, a world I cannot enter, passing just beyond my grasping fingers

I only pray that my children’s children shall play in virtual gardens, beyond the gaze of Pestilence, Famine War and Death, and that the virtual life they live will be in harmony with the new life, a hopefully endless one free of pain and sorrow and overflowing with love and laughter

My poor soul must trudge it’s way back to Eden, with only the light of monitors to guide me