circuitous

you are asking who waits
in the hidden corners of a room
when the brooding night has fallen
and the lights go out one by one

on instruction
from somewhere
beyond the pale
the grave

somewhere
beyond
this jurisdiction

now you see how agency
is a river flowing away from you
dribbling through your fingers
into the hands of others
whose hands are only
facsimiles of flesh
soulless circuitry
as dead as wire

© BH, 2024

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A contemplation on today’s eminence grise. The ghost in the machine is becoming the machine in the ghost. It seems to end up as a loss of agency - an agency so few ever had - but the areas of erosion are different now. The enemy, if such a thing it is, is not even human any more.