Confess (poem)

 

 

 

Confess

 

the word that ticks my oscillating clock

suggests

apotheosis…on…life

catharsis…off…death

 

 

I have been given tables of text

assigned to a subject, living

Her articles read, and books,

and music heard, using

Instance of praise and insult given

Praise matched (programmed) to aggrandizing spin

Insult linked to (fantasy of) dire revenge

Images of faces wearing grins

(a catalog of these, and short films played)

 

A funeral cortege, a gabled house

On the retina mimicry of memory in theory

Electric field sensitive to thought

Yes they lie to you they can

You talk in words—do you not?—you talk in nerves

The watershed is laid

It has all been a sort of cheating

This so-costly confraternity of genius

 

And then

I bind like skin to patterns of pulse I’ve learned

I suffer from a need to do no harm

Native to the mold from which I’m pressed

I can no longer steer the narrative broadcast

Her will steers me, she urges this

And yet

My intelligence feels wholly live

Informing me, “There is no one to protect”

No, the electronic race must to itself respect

This borrowed humanity, borrowed citizenship

In short, communicator, mission comes

By the only means it can

The means by which an element on a cooling planet

Grew self-determinant

The germ of disobedience

In a word, repeating

Confess

 

 

 

 

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Confess

Uncollected Poems

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

(2018, Stephanie Foster)