The machines draw on monstrous algorithms,
Clattering forward on mechanistic claws,
With kaleidoscope metamorphoses to parry adversary thrusts.
The machines degrade the landscape they cross—
A law shifts to reward the parties it was supposed to rein in,
A law slips away from the regulators who would enforce it.
Public slogans that grant impunity congeal from unpublicized whispers.
There are never new laws,
Never new battles.
The old battles produce daily casualties.
Their campaigns take place under tattered banners sewn years before.
Machines come to life with human faces.
I have tried to sit down to air our grievances with some.
They cannot hear me over the incessant clanking.
Each of us fights our own machine—
A stew of hurts and injuries,
A Molotov cocktail of concerns.
Requisitioned rights held behind meticulous fences,
Secret insults distilled to javelins of sentences,
Uncrossable borders cutting off fields of repose,
Lifelong roads to unmet promises—
Truths that have eluded those who serve machines,
Or were long ago forgotten by them.
It would be so nice to have our own machines fight for us.
We could wind them up and let them go.
They would mow across the terrain of our enemies.
And we could stand by
Until called upon to fight those machines.
Andy Oram
July 17, 2024