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Jackson Pollock
awards
signs of progress
National Novel Writing Month, 2007
call for submissions
• Third Person Press •
what: Undercurrents Anthology
speculative fiction/poetry
who: Cape Breton Island writers
when: deadline March 15, 2008
how: click for detailed guidelines -
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Apr
10
UPLOAD
April 10, 2007 |
[-poetry, art-]
poem by Sherry D. Ramsey
images by Travis Sutton and Flikr
They’ve made me comfortable, or tried
arthritis-pocked bones protest every surface now
muscles fatigued beyond resting
Death beckons a bony invitation–
I decline.
I choose the upload.
A week now, neurojacked into the console
threadlike filaments tracing
the secret convolutions of my brain
compiling the message that is me
Eighty-nine year-old ET
phoning myself home.
Today.
I write this poem because
I have ciphered my life in poetry
the only immortality
to which I dared aspire
So many words, so many years
and now reduced to words–
is it such a poor reduction in the end?
Is this the last poem I will write?
Will my uploaded self
still think in the cadences
of line and stanza
emotion and image?
Or will I compile/compute/calculate/respond
in precisely packeted bits of data;
filtered through thought loop and memory engram code
of this particular elderly female poet
but emerging as something other.
This poem will be
uploaded like all the rest
will I read it later and wonder who I was
to write such a thing?
Who will I be?
Decoded/recoded/encoded/uploaded into my new APC
Ambulatory Personality Console
intuitive interface, self-directed motion
best they can do right now,
but in ten years, they say, we’ll have RPR’s
Robotic Personality Repositories
arms, legs, face
Save a picture
it can even look like me.
The preparations pause
one last chance to reconsider:
death or discontinuity?
My daughter is here
truest poetry I ever wrote
She holds my hand, smiles through tears
Will she recognize me
talk to me still in keyboard stutter
fingers skittering over the keys of my APC
if she finds it too unnerving to speak to a machine
while I blink-flash my responses
upon the screen of my face
answer in synthesized mother tones
Will she still read love in my pixellated, digitized eyes?
I nod.
The neurojack tugs at my scalp.
Somewhere, someone taps a key.
Eighty-nine years of
thought and word and memory and me
stream out of my brain
like atmosphere pushed rudely aside by vacuum
like blood welling up in a vial
I still feel my daughter’s hand…
[Darkness. With a silicon flavor.]
Sensory inputs blink into being
I see the room [too sharp, adjust filter]
And there is my [beautiful] daughter
She hesitates, torn between the husk on the bed
and the ergonomic contours of my new APC
“Mom?” she asks.
“I’m fine.”
[synthesized mother voice operating
within normal parameters]
[soothing]
I offer the pre-programmed equivalent of a smile.
More tears. But I think she understands.
Her mother is still here.
I take stock.
[no pain]
[no fatigue]
No blood, no heart, no hand, no breast, no brain
but still the words, thank God;
I am reduced to words
but the words are enough.
|
Sherry D. Ramsey is a frequent contributor to the PCQ. In addition to poetry, Sherry writes speculative fiction. She’s published many short stories and poems, and her unpublished SF novel, “One’s Aspect to the Sun” was recently awarded second place in the 28th Annual Atlantic Writing Competition’s novel category, the H.R. (Bill) Percy Prize. UPLOAD was originally published online in Aoife’s Kiss in June 2003. Sherry is also the publisher and editor of The Scriptorium Webzine for Writers. More information: sherrydramsey.com. |
Travis Sutton’s work can be seen at flickr.com/photos/travissutton.
Flikr’s work is here.
See Sherry Ramsey’s other work in The PCQ:
I, Galaxy
Accidents Happen
Seven Creative Ways to Enjoy your Garden
Originally re-published (poem) and published (artwork) by permission of the poet and artists in the January 2006 issue of The Practically Creative Quarterly, theme: alterations
also posted in: Art , Alterations , Photography , Poetry , Contributors , The Original PCQ, 05-06 , Creations
tags: after-life, art, creation, creative, daughter, death, flickr, mother, poem, poet, poetry, sherry ramsey, travis sutton, upload
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