livingtech

I’ve been studying web narratives. Hypernarratives. I have a new theory:
The web is a narrative. Every click is based on a decision. The decision
is based on knowledge of the elements on the page, knowledge of where the
click will take you. That knowledge is like a plot. So in a way, the
difference between the term ‘hypertext’ and ‘hyperfiction’ is nothing.
There is no difference. Hyperfiction is only pretending to be closer to
what fiction once was, what fiction once meant.

_confronting the background images_

environment as part of us:
dust in your apartment
cobwebs make you you
eyes cultivate relationships
eyes as connectors
eyes as ambassadors of image
eye circuits
image investments, eye bank-tellers
eyebrokers, imagebrokers
walking out on the image eye by eye
one eye after the other
ships of eyes, drowned eyes, wooden eyes
giraffe eyes, elephant eyes,
elephant images, wet images
(like water, washing away, being washed
away, falling image, image storm)

Eye images confuse the matter:
eyes in pyramids, eyes in hands, in texts,
in contexts, in pancakes, in meatballs
eyes eaten by stowaways…
eye-slaughter, eyemage.

Dragon guided by the wind
computers our agency…
“the medium is the message”
to some degree, the message is
transformed by the medium.

We fanciful children
playing god games
(because that myth has finally fallen)
sweep out onto the streets
get sucked back into silicon
live computer-guided lives

Each inch of digital empire
is an itch in the right direction:
We’ll buy power, or die trying.

In the unforeseeable future
species die out and replicate themselves
brains bought and sold
biceps too, and physical will augment
the digital.

earwax windex why to exponential
leaves wither at the touch of environments
like the sahara in my eardrums. I’ve
stolen the Tajmahal and eaten the gold dome
it was like a chocolate orange, tasted
just as sweet, cracked like an egg,
one part jagged, pushing up into my gums
made me bleed eggshell bloody hell
all onto the table. Doves and satan
with a red nose (he leads santa’s sleigh)
all carpet-dive into something resembling
the red sea. It’s my gum laden blood,
the carapace of my ghosts, the dreggs
of my dead lovers, the sequin studded leather
of my current lover. I’m now a norwegen,
or a sacrificial lamb, can’t think which.

I’ve got switchblade eyes,
treetrunk fists, busker’s breath, bat
sonar in the sea of night’s sky…
I storyspace with the best of them,
sing like leonard (cohen or nemoy,
I don’t know.) I now like to look
I like to look tomorrow, I wait
for email as if it were the end
of the world, which it will be
if I never get the email…

no new mail.
no name on my datebooks
what an empty desolate

no potatos
no tomatos
no swing dance lessons
what subconscious patheticism

no signposts
no scapegoats
no pocket protecting prophets
no idea screaming sockets
what dreary savage

no network television yet
no cartoons or doodles
no subscription porn
no dreamtime crap
no science fiction fandom
what sad sad sad sad sad

while( scanf( "%look", days_ahead ) )
{
   if( I get up tomorrow )
	{
         the terrible day will descend;
         screamf("Fuck you, terrible day!");
	}
   else
      {
	   The terrible day will not descend;
	   I will lay beached on my bed;
	   a trembling sun will not hinder me;
      }
   day++;
}

18 wheel bitstreams.
Text is not enough anymore.
We’ve got to capture eye & ear,
mouth & mind.

Perfectly quotable,
text like thumbnails–
wet your whistle for words.
I’m an accounting machine
crunching out the numbers of intelect
and emotion.
Trouble is, you’ve got to understand both,
most don’t.

My lists are all you’ve got to chew on.

* * *

If it took you as long
to read this
as it takes me to write it,
you would understand

what I’m saying.

* * *

Jump on, it’s a freeway out there.
Ten-ton roller-derby
balls of static.
User interface universe.

Forms and fields,
database detachment.
Why isn’t there a field for emotional disposition?
Is this any less urgent than favorite pet or color?
We are increasingly quantified by impersonal statistics.
Sociological downtide.
(Spirit of ASP.)

When this page is archaic,
like a .txt file,
I’ll store it away
and look at it infrequently.

Poetry will truly be alive then,
writhing and swirling images
changing with your emotions.
The universe will be larger and more full
inside bytes of our digital kingdom.