The Hiatus

In danger, the holothurian splits itself in two:
it offers one self to be devoured by the world
and, in its second self, escapes.

Violently it divides itself into a doom and a salvation,
into a penalty and a recompense,
into what was and what will be.

In the middle of the holothurian’s body a chasm opens
and its edges immediately become alien to each other.

On the one edge, death, on the other, life.
Here despair, there hope.

If there is a balance, the scales do not move.
If there is justice, here it is.

To die as much as necessary, without overstepping the bounds.
To grow again from a salvaged remnant.

We, too, know how to split ourselves
but only into the flesh and a broken whisper.
Into the flesh and poetry.

On one side the throat, on the other, laughter,
slight, quickly dying down.

Here a heavy heart, there non omnis moriar,
Three little words, like three little plumes of light.

We are not cut in two by a chasm.
A chasm surrounds us.

- Wislawa Szymborska

I thought I was innocent,
But I’m being punished.
I didn’t start this,
But I have to finish it somehow.
I can’t say I didn’t know about it,
But I don’t remember taking part in it.
I get the feeling my freedom cost me dearly,
But I don’t remember selling my soul cheaply.

Hey, hey!
Until I die and say goodbye…
Hey, hey!
…no one will ever catch me.

You probably don’t know the eternal outlaws
Who wander the distant night.

I disdain you like the rain disdains the earth.
    Thus, when I fall, you almost feel that I am hate
  That holds your feet and pulls you towards darkness.
    For thoughts of you, I suffer, as death is fate.

The coldness that I bare since my unwanted birth
    Are like trickles, in time, they come and go.
  But as I fall towards your absent embrace,
    Try might I to shut them tight, still they flow.

They flow and leak towards their hearts and yours
    That freeze memoirs of me for your inspection.
  ’tis there that you might see that I am cold.
    And death, and hate, and forget are my redemption.

So, I now sleep in this bed that I prepared,
    To famish myself of your dances in front of me.
  That I may someday walk your path as I awake.
    And say nothing more than an apology.

If I cut my wrist
And remove my hand,
Will I die from bleeding?
As I celebrate the pain
Of slowly losing sanity
Amidst the continuous
Draining of blood
From my head?

If I turn this light off
And lurk in darkness,
For all eternity,
Will your hand touch
My cold forehead?
And pray that my soul
May wander
Inside the recesses
Of your ever
Withering heart?

For this specter
That I call self
Is trapped at the center
Of my universe.
While everything else
Is rotating,
Living, loving,
Realizing.
And throwing scattered words
Of age and wisdom.
While I glutton over
Feelings of hate and love,
Over
And over
Again.

The only escape I see
Is to disappear…

Into the placid breeze
Like a speck of cremated dust.
And fly from your nose
To your lungs.
To smell your sentience,
Feel your heart,

And see the world
Through eyes
Of non-existence.

Forever…

Free Software.  Software Freedom.  Hard ideals that I (forcefully) burned inside my head.  Ideals of a world that is unbounded by synthetic scarcity.  Where the cost of sharing knowledge to a single person is effectively equal to the cost of sharing knowledge to the whole human race: approximately nil.  Where the ethics of community, sharing and belongingness meet technology so that everything melts into digital air.  Air that we all know we can freely breathe.
September 15 is the day we celebrate this freedom.  This is my little contribution to that day’s cause.