You laughed at my

pointless remark

and showed me the setting

on the new, new dot machine,

like a 'ghost filter', black,

grey, chrome and you're

hardly there;

the leaves of

some exotic plant

filling the solid plates

of silver face, torso.

I said such things are

pointless art.

You said that the only thing

that's certain

is that nothing

is certain,

that the whirlpool of data

was a holiday to use,

to embrace and discard

as daily ritual;

and bid me jump in

for life's too short,

these tools are ours to use,

cities would be built

from them.

 

A little later, you disappeared.

I read it in the sky

or maybe I saw it in

the puddles on the street.

I went to the docks,

saw the trawlers bedecked

and steam rise.

Sunsets drew me on,

to leave me teetering on

the edge of some suburban wood;

wondered if I could find you there,

clawed my way through hours,

days, weeks of lichen, bracken,

emerging in some clearing

at midnight, exhaling ice.

Then I unplugged, staggered

over and pulled up carpet,

placing my hands

on stunted nails

and moved around

twelve cups of water.

One day I'd walk out

of there again,

and leave someone

in the fastness of home

to keep my light burning.

 

The only thing

that's certain

is that nothing

is certain.

The time having come

to sound the alarm,

take up hammers and

axes, affix nametags,

to enter

the factories and

grab the master keys;

I then came back

to what you told me.

I re-attached the chains

took a deep sea dive

in ones and zeros.

I waded continent-deep,

feet magnetic

on dead coral;

to dream you're slumped there

on a throne of amber,

switching on the filter,

where the fibre-optic lines

had flayed your

egg-white skin, the

machines building within.