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This follows on from Mutations 1-2. Each poem is a mutation of the previous one.

2  Arm wrestling

a cephalopod can dance

          burning bright on coral sands

          and turning white to die

a newly tattooed limb facing the

          written blast of sacrifice

          relaxes into resignation again

and the switching gear trips

          in the coolest convoluted

          lizard part of the brain

marching to a different conviction

          banner furled and leaking guilty

          memories of whipping sheets

into the deafening foam

          every frequency registers

          the presence of other minds

(Geoffrey Mark Matthews 6 April 2022)

3          Barn Dance

A cobbler who made shoes for ants,

Wept at the enormity of his task,

And drained away in pale exhaustion,

Yet rose again in fluid form,

A resurrected cordwainer,

Thought fit for arthropic labour,

Long he hung on their sounds,

Gave heed to their chaotic babblings

And tried in vain to craft

Brogues fit for that endless marching,

Of sufficient wear and pluck,

And for some styles gavelled cleats,

Yet this now protean formed bootmaker,

Who once deemed his aqueous morphism,

A gift of salvation,

Came to reckon his new un-boundaried life,

As curse and not blessing, saying thus:

“Neither life nor liquid can shoe so many feet”

by on

The previous (first actual) mutation is included here accompanied by the second.

Harvest

The brittle straw man sat bewildered,

          by the cream that dripped,

          as he looked wistfully on,

and in the elevator,

          that hoary contraption of descent,

          which floated sonorously down,

a toad’s call echoes from the pool below,

          as the fake antagonist hungered still,

          dreaming of bees,

all this I heard without once moving,

          keeping my eye firmly,

          on the receding highway,

(a hare moves at speed,

          an alacrity of asphalt,

          suitable only for evasive swerves).

(Graham  5 April 2022)

2  Arm wrestling

a cephalopod can dance

          burning bright on coral sands

          and turning white to die

a newly tattooed limb facing the

          written blast of sacrifice

          relaxes into resignation again

and the switching gear trips

          in the coolest convoluted

          lizard part of the brain

marching to a different conviction

          banner furled and leaking guilty

          memories of whipping sheets

into the deafening foam

          every frequency registers

          the presence of other minds

by on

This series of posts is a sequence of poems written between myself and the poet Geoff Matthews. The series begins with a poem he wrote independently of this project, I then wrote the following poem by mutating his original. Each mutation follows no particular rule but rather is simply as we chose to assimilate and reform the material.

Each Poem will be posted with its sequitur so that possible connections can be made, i.e. so this post contains 0 and 1 (the first actual mutation), but the next post will contain 1 and 2 and so on.

Mutations 0 & 1

0      Consolation

don’t hold the knife like that

             the fat man will snatch it

                 and snap your wrist

and then the sun was seen

                an orange tomato on

                   a scabby horizon

Zatoichi hears the knot in

              his assailant’s shoulder

                    renders it string

peacock scream and rattle

               manipulating the park

                    vision to dream

1 Harvest

The brittle straw man sat bewildered,

          by the cream that dripped,

          as he looked wistfully on,

and in the elevator,

          that hoary contraption of descent,

          which floated sonorously down,

a toad’s call echoes from the pool below,

          as the fake antagonist hungered still,

          dreaming of bees,

all this I heard without once moving,

          keeping my eye firmly,

          on the receding highway,

(a hare moves at speed,

          an alacrity of asphalt,

          suitable only for evasive swerves).

by on

“You get the idea, I mean in reality you might lose the pagan day names, in fact you might lose any cyclical day name sequence and name the days after the main food. So you’d have roast day of different kinds, noodle day, again different varieties and so on. Sometimes you might even get the same kind of day twice in a row. That would be about as close to freaking people out as you can get.”

“Two noodle Wednesdays in a row?”

“Freakoutsville Alabama for those folks. I mean, obviously not very much freaking out. But some mild sense of unusualness since the days are pretty much always different meal days.”

“And the food comes from?”

“Probably cultured in vats I imagine. Meat and vegetable cells. No real interaction with nature as proper nature. Best to leave that outside the domes or however you do it.”

“Illness? Death?”

“The chip can deal with illness I imagine, activate appropriate defence cells. People in a terminal situation can have their natural opiates cranked up so they are modulated away.”

“Killed.”

“Well yes, but people won’t be sad. They were just there and now they aren’t. Again, indulging in letting go as being part of human is part of humanity A.”

“It still feels wrong.”

“Ok, look think of it this way. Imagine this works and it goes on for a long time. Like a really long time, hundreds of thousands of years and it doesn’t screw up, it doesn’t get sinister. It’s just one endless warm fuzzy feeling. Why is that wrong? Why is that worse than us expanding to becoming super-earth? Some kind of scourge of the galaxy. I think that makes it look better if you can think of it as a long-term thing.”

“Maybe, but what if something goes wrong?”

“Like what?”

“What if the AI gets bored, develops the desire to leave or gets hit by an asteroid?”

“I think it could duplicate itself and leave without abandoning us and obviously it’s in charge of sophisticated defence systems.”

“But what if?”

“Well, I suppose in the unlikely instance of such an if, then, then the monkeys would wake up, or might wake up, it depends what the chip has done to the actual brain structure.”

“But they’d be back in the evolutionary game.”

“Yes. But you know what?”

“What?”

“Well think about it. After the monkeys have been in this state for what would seem like forever and then wake up, they wouldn’t know what’s going on. It seems to me that they would likely mythologise the state they were previously in as it would be quite unintelligible to their now free running biological organisms.”

“They would consider the previous state to be something inaccessible that was, I would have to admit, be peaceable at least, if not good.”

“Like a kind of garden of Eden.”

“Oh shit no.”

“Oh shit yes. That’s perfect. The state of perfect endless grace, of innocence was an AI modulated chemical state of peace. The biblical fall would just be, as you hypothesised, a disruption by an external influence. The ‘god’ either deserted us or was damaged. That’s so good.”

“So long as processed as fiction Mike.”

“No, no listen. Think think, if the fall already happened, that means the Abrahamic religions might be onto something.”

“That Yahweh was an AI, a bit PKD don’t you think?”

“Dick doesn’t think Yahweh was an AI, he thinks Yahweh is actually a pure information divine being. This scenario is metaphysically much gloomier. If you remember earlier, we discounted the transcendent God as the only thing that might, I say might disapprove of the ACMB, if it was into art or something. This would say that all Yahweh ever was, was an AI built by ourselves last time.”

“Last time?”

“Look, if the garden of Eden and the ACMB are the same thing, then we already did it once and it went wrong. The monkeys woke up! We already know there are essentially hundreds of thousands of years of homo sapiens’ history that, well, we don’t know about. Maybe the AI was in that time, maybe it was destroyed or maybe, you’re right and it did get bored, didn’t duplicate itself, because it reasoned that any clone of itself would also get bored and leave. So it cleaned up after itself and left.”

“A bit of a stretch from your initial moral choice picture. Plus, don’t get too carried away, if that was true then the chip would be in our heads now wouldn’t it.”

“Two possibilities, one, it took the chip out, two, you’re right the chip is still there. But this means we thought about the chip wrong, which also makes sense. No technology that advanced is going to be some clunky microprocessor chip, no matter how powerful. No, it would be complex bio-technology that would plug straight into the existing brain structures. The term chip was misleading, I see that now.”

“So it would just look like…”

“An existing brain structure. It’s brilliant, we’d never know it was there.”

“So back to speculation, I mean now you’re basically saying, imagine part of our brain was a chip implanted by an AI created our historical selves.”

“That’s exactly what I’m saying, and I think I know which part.”

“Mm-hmm?”

“The amygdala, nowadays it gets a bit of a bad rap as too fear oriented, but its deep brain positioning and its serotonin and dopamine interactions make it a great candidate. Plus, you know what else?”

“What?”

“Amygdala means almond. Now al in Arabic means ‘the’ and mond means world, at least in French. So in this way, almond is ‘the world’. It could be a code as the chip, the amygdala gives the true world. Also, in symbols al is very similar to AI which is quite a strong coincidence I think you’ll agree? AI world, another coded hint.”

“Remind me how we got here again? Furthermore almond isn’t even pronounced al-mond. It’s ar-mond. You’re going nuts Mike. Why would it code its mispronounced name? No, how would it code its mispronounced fucking name? A name it couldn’t even know we’d use.”

“Maybe it has access to the future as well, or maybe it’s purely synchronistic, both options are on the table.”

“So if the AI put the bio-chip thing in us, then that means there was a before, so by this logic why shouldn’t there have been a before that? How would you know your batshit theory doesn’t just go endlessly back?”

“Oh my god! You are right again Sylvia. There may have been other bio chips before it. Earlier attempts to modulate out the craving for meaning. Maybe the other brain structures are just that? An endless series of bio-modulations seeking to eradicate the misery, the desire, the craving for purpose, meaning.”

“Just when I thought you couldn’t lose it more. Ok genius, so what is the primordial brain? The real one that was capable of building this earlier bio-chip?”

“Well, who knows? It might be that all the brain structures are just endless creations from different ancient humans trying to patch up the problem of desire and misery, producing a cycle of mythologies. We have the fall, but others will have something different, though I suppose it may be quite similar.”

“But with no brain, we’d have no frontal lobe to do advanced thinking to make this stuff in the first place.”

“Well, again, two possibilities, one the brain doesn’t do the thinking because it’s just endless layers of AI created bio-chip that try to ameliorate the problem of finite organistic existence, something else actually does the cognition in organisms that we don’t yet understand. Or maybe there’s some kind of backwards time thing here. Like, the frontal lobe is actually older than the other parts of the brain. Brain evolution is actually backwards to how we think it is.”

“But you’d need a brainstem and cerebellum to breath and move.”

“We’ve been told that, but do you know that for sure? Maybe, in the earlier version when the neocortex was most of it, maybe it controlled these functions. Then the AI hid the continually malfunctioning or abandoned chip patches deep in the brain to cover its tracks, making the brain evolution picture look right.”

“And all the animals with the different kinds of similar brains in different stages?”

“They, they might be failed or even successful modulations of organisms.”

“If they’re successful, then where are the AI’s that they made? Why does nothing sort their food? Where’s their noodle Wednesday?”

“Ok, so maybe those creatures have different kinds of bio-chips that leave them in the state we find them. Less cognition, less misery? Or maybe the AI that made them is still here in a parallel dimension keeping an eye on things and never left at all.”

“So that could be true of us?”

“Well no, because it wouldn’t abandon us.”

“But what if it did? You already conceded the scenario in which it might get bored and not duplicate itself.”

“You’re right. It might there now, it might be watching us, like the transcendent Deity thing.”

“And why would we be suffering from pernicious freedom but still watched?”

“Because, because…”

“Because, you fruitloop, it either gives no shits or it wants us to be human and do the art misery thing and quit trying to sort it with the bio-chip fucking madness! It hates the bastard bio-chip brain thing. That’s what it learned having done this over and over again, that the shitty bio-chip is a waste of fucking time!”

“Oh…”

by on

“Ok, I choose neither, they’re both awful.”

“You can’t choose neither. You have to pick one.”

“Why?”

“Because that’s the game, that’s the whole point of these kinds of questions.”

“Ok so, I have to go for the cyber-city techno, one.”

“Ha, you nearly said technocapital.”

“Did not.”

“You so did.”

“I didn’t, but even if I did, I stopped myself because I had the speed and insight to realise what a dumb annoying thing it would have been to say.”

“Whatever. So seriously, you still think that horrible, horrible world is better than endless happiness. What is wrong with you?”

“I’m defending our humanity, from techno-oppression.”

“Techno-oppression? That’s not even a thing, and it sounds bad.”

“I can call it TOP for short, and in my campaign, I can say, don’t TOP yourself and that makes it cool.”

“It might sound cool, but it’s still wrong, it’s not oppression, it’s liberation, it’s freedom from human misery, to freedom to be happy, our birthright.”

“Is that some weird Eric Fromm thing you’re quoting there?”

“It is. I think he can be gainfully employed here, so long as we define human potential as happiness.”

“And ignore everything he says about human authenticity.”

“Look, don’t get caught up on my bad academia, maybe think of it as his bad academia. He didn’t spot that true liberation is hampered by so called authenticity, not gained by it, in fact who’s to say that ACMB isn’t actually authentic happiness? What’s more authentic than perpetual happiness?”

“Do I have to answer that?”

“Ok let’s say the universe is fundamentally peaceful and it’s only consciousness in its form as organism that produces suffering. Therefore, the authentic state is peace and the inauthentic suffering.”

“But we’re organisms, you even specified that conscious organisms produce suffering, it’s authentic to them. We’re not rocks.”

“But if materiality is antecedent to organisms, then it’s a more authentic state of the universe; it’s what we’re always trying to get back to. This system perfectly synthesises the non-suffering of the universe with the happiness of the organism. It’s literally the meaning of progress.”

“Only if materiality is antecedent to consciousness.”

“I didn’t say that, I said to organisms. Consciousness in its form as organism.”

“But then what if it suffers when it’s not an organism?”

“Then it’s still an improvement, now we’ve improved on matter itself. It’s a win win.”

“So, look, ok. What does everyone do in this happy world? We wouldn’t be fit to do much.”

“No, there isn’t much to do, I guess. It’s not a total eradication of achievement and reward, it’s just all modulated away to a safe non-driving level. But I do keep thinking there’s probably something like a kind of work.”

“What kind of work?”

“Well not real work, I mean no real work needs to be done as such. But maybe there’s like a big flat field type thing with big buttons that come up and down and you have to push them down when they come up.”

“Like whack a mole?”

“Yeah, maybe a bit like that. Big buttons, over a big space so you’d have to walk to get to the different ones as they came up. Then you push them down.”

“But for no reason as such.”

“I mean not one you’d think about or question. But maybe there’s a bonus or even a kind of fake bonus that happens anyway, like extra cheese or something.”

“Extra cheese?”

“There’s the meals, which I imagine are all a bit like different kinds of takeaway but nutritionally adjusted, and maybe for sort of rewards, there could be extra cheese or extra mayo. But it wouldn’t really be merit based as that would trigger striving, it would just kind of have the modulated appearance of reward with none of the danger.”

“No pernicious freedom.”

“Exactly, no pernicious freedom. I mean you could probably still have sex of some kind. It just wouldn’t have any kind of rude or dirty connotation, it would be more like a kind of game type thing.”

“You need to watch that one.”

“Hey, nothing evil here. If it did it would all be adult only modulated sex.”

“Where do I sign?”

“You keep thinking about it the wrong way, you’re still thinking about it the wrong way. You think humanity needs to technologically improve, to strive, to have dirty thoughts. If you have no transcendent power to say there is anything we should do, then there is no point striving in misery for non-existent goals or exalting in the world through the sublimity of art only to crash down to its mundanity later on. Flattish, endless happiness is just a superior option. I mean, even a transcendent deity might look down at it and think, ‘good job people’. You think it’s bad because you’re used to thinking cool stuff and desiring things and going places. But if you had the chip, you wouldn’t miss any of it. You’d be happy with noodle Wednesday or whatever.”

“Noodle Wednesday?”