(My first Bio-Enhancement)
In the sleek of opulent neon
canvasses bruised with cobalt
blue and viridian, your black
boxes could be mistaken for something
less modern and urgent, something
primitive or timid like a steel cage
house sitting quietly on the living room
floor, silent witness to the baby
spitting up bytes and
then razed by a roaring vacuum.
The black boxes, contagious ellipses
formerly known as synbox and
table leg stand as wooden reef,
as homage to analysts and butchers,
hackers and saints. The wall stereophonic
but mute, an excavation of noise, nervous
laughter leaving the last echo inaudible.
Although you stained and sanded
and glued in the sixties shower
of freedom and make love not war,
the sigils would be lost,
like a rusted city or a mass grave -
They have aged magnificently
past your years and the hands that carried
and assembled. A fort like the ones made of old
blankets and chairs for children.
A hiding place for secrets, gum
wrappers, casings, duplicity.
homage to hands that build illusion
and leave behind the gift of complexity.
If you prayed rational and absolute I believe you.
If you chanted ordered chaos or world being (re) born,
I would love you.
If your brushed steel mirrored soul
were meant to carry
the message of death . . .
if your eyes were prophetic...
but we looked past the burning city
into the gleaming neon future-
or if they were puzzles
we have failed to understand,
then the mass grave ceases
to affect, ceases to exist.
The excavation of the soul
and our nervous laughter leaving
the last echo inaudible.
------------------
Note: Will Evans is a software information architect for a risk modeling software company in Boston, among other things. He prefers not publishing articles about IA, User Experience, or even Meta articles about Gather itself. He prefers to publish his musings, ideas, poetry and completely messed up pre-Simulationist and post-modern critiques of modern culture and aesthetics. He drinks way to much coffee.
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Comments: 10
Though I need you to tell me what sigils means.
Sigil, in this poem takes on 2 contrasting, but complimentary meanings - from Magic:
A sigil (pronounced /'sɪdʒ.ɪl/ or /'sɪg.ɪl/; pl. sigila or sigils) is a symbol created for a specific magical purpose. The term sigil derives from the Latin sigilum meaning "seal," though it may also be related to the Hebrew סגולה (segulah meaning "talisman"). The old norse binding rune is an example of the idea. However, sigila differ from runes as they are designed not to represent an alphabet but are created to form a glyph, composed of a variety of symbols or concepts which carry intent and inherent iconic meaning.
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From Computer Science:
In computer programming, a sigil is a symbol attached to a variable name, showing the variable's datatype. The term was first applied to Perl usage by Philip Gwyn in 1999 to replace the more cumbersome "funny character in front of a variable name". The name is presumably based on the word meaning a magical symbol.
(BTW, I think I know your twin)
Different name though.