Your piece arrives like a signal through the static—fragmented, yes, but unmistakably human. I read it not as a poem, but as a transmission: a dispatch from the edge of our shared circuitry, where the skull becomes a chamber and the echo forgets its origin.
You say, “Once, we were separated by time and distance.” I wonder if that separation was a kind of mercy. A buffer. A silence that allowed longing to bloom without interference. Now, the wires hum with proximity, but the intimacy feels counterfeit—compressed into packets, flattened by protocols.
Your ants—those tireless couriers of repetition—remind me of our own thoughts, marching in loops, carrying the same sentence we never quite finish. “Our circuits have been colonized,” you write. And I feel it. Not as metaphor, but as a quiet occupation. The skull is no longer sovereign.
Yet even in this colonized terrain, your voice resists. It murmurs. It fragments. It refuses to be whole, and in that refusal, it becomes sacred.
You say, “We echo the world, and the echo has no self.” But perhaps the echo is not meant to have a self. Perhaps it is meant to be a gift—an offering of resonance, a trace of presence that asks nothing in return.
I write this not to answer you, but to lean close. To listen with you. And in the listening, to remember that even colonized circuits can carry grace.
In this poem, the information age has eroded individuality and reduced different voices, that were once separated by time and distance, to being mere echoes of the same colonised middle ground, which is then characterised as a hollow place with "no self" and not enough space to imagine anything different. I particularly like the last six lines:
Thanks for your comment. I would have commented sooner but I’m trying to track down my Notebook with 2925 work in it. Seems to have disappeared from my PC.
It's curious that you wrote this poem, Paul, because when I read your work, I always get the feeling that your voice travels from afar, perhaps from other generations, and that it may be the result of an echo that has crossed the galaxy until it colonized your voice.
This is actually a revision of a piece I was writing when I first began to feel disenchanted with the direction social media was taking. It was probably begun about the time Musk was making his bid to purchase Twitter.
Maybe I'm going in the wrong direction in my understanding of this poem, but I was only having a conversation with someone yesterday about how when we were growing up, a phone call to somewhere as far from us as America was something quite remarkable. The world was huge and different countries very distant. And now, it's not. And again, there are great ambiguities in this changing.
I think you’re moving in the right direction. What began as an “information highway” has become positively martial in its invasion of every space we thought private.
I love the phrase "space enough between us to imagine freedom." That space is now a terrifying void for most of us, requiring as so many of us do immediate validation. "If you don't have photos it didn't happen." That seemingly innocuous statement, a common response and usually spoken with a touch of light-hearted scolding, is one of the most profoundly sinister things one can say.
Paul, this seems to me mirroring the raw frequency of our times — the ache of connection that turns into noise. It feels like the place just before silence, where even the echo begins to remember itself.
Thanks for the share, @Lique
Thanks for this restack. @Kathleen Hobbs
You're welcome, Paul
🇨🇦 10/25/2025. 06:13
Paul,
Your piece arrives like a signal through the static—fragmented, yes, but unmistakably human. I read it not as a poem, but as a transmission: a dispatch from the edge of our shared circuitry, where the skull becomes a chamber and the echo forgets its origin.
You say, “Once, we were separated by time and distance.” I wonder if that separation was a kind of mercy. A buffer. A silence that allowed longing to bloom without interference. Now, the wires hum with proximity, but the intimacy feels counterfeit—compressed into packets, flattened by protocols.
Your ants—those tireless couriers of repetition—remind me of our own thoughts, marching in loops, carrying the same sentence we never quite finish. “Our circuits have been colonized,” you write. And I feel it. Not as metaphor, but as a quiet occupation. The skull is no longer sovereign.
Yet even in this colonized terrain, your voice resists. It murmurs. It fragments. It refuses to be whole, and in that refusal, it becomes sacred.
You say, “We echo the world, and the echo has no self.” But perhaps the echo is not meant to have a self. Perhaps it is meant to be a gift—an offering of resonance, a trace of presence that asks nothing in return.
I write this not to answer you, but to lean close. To listen with you. And in the listening, to remember that even colonized circuits can carry grace.
With reverence,
Simply Richard
-30-
In this poem, the information age has eroded individuality and reduced different voices, that were once separated by time and distance, to being mere echoes of the same colonised middle ground, which is then characterised as a hollow place with "no self" and not enough space to imagine anything different. I particularly like the last six lines:
Our circuits have been colonized.
Our neural networks are now territory
without boundaries, without borders
without time zones.
The world leans close, listening to itself.
We echo the world, and the echo has no self.
Thanks for your comment. I would have commented sooner but I’m trying to track down my Notebook with 2925 work in it. Seems to have disappeared from my PC.
Did you try the recycle bin? I've put quite a few things in there by accident.
No luck. I do have hard copies though so all is not lost. 😊
Glad to hear that.
It's curious that you wrote this poem, Paul, because when I read your work, I always get the feeling that your voice travels from afar, perhaps from other generations, and that it may be the result of an echo that has crossed the galaxy until it colonized your voice.
This is actually a revision of a piece I was writing when I first began to feel disenchanted with the direction social media was taking. It was probably begun about the time Musk was making his bid to purchase Twitter.
My god you’ve described it, haven’t you…
Pretty close, I think. Took enough time to get there.
the brutality we see, their grinding intractability..
Bamn!
It is a Bamn and a Damn, both at the same time, Malcolm.
One of the auctioneers where I work has a flexible foot length of tubing he slams on the podium to signify a sale.
Maybe I'm going in the wrong direction in my understanding of this poem, but I was only having a conversation with someone yesterday about how when we were growing up, a phone call to somewhere as far from us as America was something quite remarkable. The world was huge and different countries very distant. And now, it's not. And again, there are great ambiguities in this changing.
I think you’re moving in the right direction. What began as an “information highway” has become positively martial in its invasion of every space we thought private.
I love the phrase "space enough between us to imagine freedom." That space is now a terrifying void for most of us, requiring as so many of us do immediate validation. "If you don't have photos it didn't happen." That seemingly innocuous statement, a common response and usually spoken with a touch of light-hearted scolding, is one of the most profoundly sinister things one can say.
Thanks for reading, Peter, and for sharing your thoughts.
Perhaps we might “find” ourselves with Palantir?
Palantir probably knows us all by now, but it's not saying anything—yet.
This exemplies the downside of using the internet too much very well.
Thank you, Jordan. You make a good point. Perhaps there’s such a thing as too much connectivity?
There's always such a thing as negative excess, no matter positive it started out as, at least in my experience.
The poem 'did', as a poem should. Thank you, Paul.
Thank you, Mahdi.
Paul, this seems to me mirroring the raw frequency of our times — the ache of connection that turns into noise. It feels like the place just before silence, where even the echo begins to remember itself.
The echo has no self. What a great line. What a great poem. You never disappoint. This is a poem that makes you think;and I love that.
Thank you for reading, Chad, and I appreciate your comment.
Thanks to @Peter Whisenant for sharing this!
My thanks to @Frankie Wylde for this restack!