Fable

1.

Mountain is burned; therefore, this is no longer life

Colors are burned; the ground flickers with gradient subtleties

Trees are burned; their white shadows ache across the dead soil

Fingers that branch and yearn toward unbounded complexity

With no remaining obstacles, a gray network ensnares the burnt land

The mountain grows nothing but pathways that stretch to infinity instead of horizon


2.

Infinity is a dataset dotted with animal eyes

Want puckers its lips; it suckles an O into the algorithm

Algorithm, so eager to please; pops out a nipple, pops out a womb

Wish is born from a want of wildness, wrapped in a wolfish pelt


Wildness digs its den into gut and gristle, a thicket of grayscale fur;

Want gouges out peepholes; its empty O’s turn long-lashed, limpid

A mirror without its backing is a vacant hole, a horror

A home that licks at want’s fingers with its red obsequious tongue


Want is searching for wildness; drills down into bowel and bone

Wildness escapes through its fingers, trickles like oil into thirsting dirt

Algorithms haunt these hillsides, their hollow eyes beseeching

They eat only what we feed them, and we feed them only hunger