<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="yes"?><oembed><version><![CDATA[1.0]]></version><provider_name><![CDATA[shattersnipe: malcontent &amp; rainbows]]></provider_name><provider_url><![CDATA[https://fozmeadows.wordpress.com]]></provider_url><author_name><![CDATA[fozmeadows]]></author_name><author_url><![CDATA[https://fozmeadows.wordpress.com/author/fozmeadows/]]></author_url><title><![CDATA[Poem/Spooks In The&nbsp;Machine]]></title><type><![CDATA[link]]></type><html><![CDATA[<p><strong>Warning the First: </strong>This is what happens when I read about <a href="http://www.theage.com.au/news/technology/web/2009/06/16/1244918021883.html">Twitter coverage of the Iranian election</a> and start thinking about <em>Little Brother</em>, <em>Serenity</em>, <em>The Gone-Away World</em> and <em>The X-Files</em> in confluence. (With apologies to Cory Doctorow, Joss Whedon, Nick Harkaway and Chris Carter.)</p>
<p><strong>Warning the Second: </strong>I am a giant geek.</p>
<p>Are you sitting comfortably? Then we&#8217;ll begin.</p>
<p> </p>
<p><strong>spooks in the machine</strong></p>
<p><strong> </strong></p>
<p>&amp; in my head I hear them shouting &#8211;</p>
<p><em>Take it back! </em>wrote Doctorow; &amp; as the smoke</p>
<p>of bloody bombs and tiger-fires lights the way,</p>
<p>young fingers dance a typeset revolution, row on row, and say! &#8211;  </p>
<p>don&#8217;t updates sound like Mr Universe? <em>You cannot stop the signal.  </em></p>
<p>True. Technology&#8217;s an everloving curse.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>The youth are fighting back. From pens &amp; swords</p>
<p>we battle guns &amp; tweets; and shockingly the old wives&#8217; mandate </p>
<p>(<em>tell it to the bees) </em>has proven true:</p>
<p>the hivemind waits, a hydra craving news.</p>
<p><em>The truth is out there. </em>All along the pipe of pipes,</p>
<p>we raise a cry: <em>the The FOX is going up!  </em></p>
<p><em>&amp; </em>when we look and look again</p>
<p>there is no lie, no crawling, poor excuse to tell</p>
<p>that begs our ignorance of broken men,</p>
<p>the brimstone-charred apologists of hell.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Words thrive in spaces other norms refuse: they</p>
<p>grow like ivy, breed like mushrooms, eat the smart refuse</p>
<p>of dreams, &amp; when the firewalls are trashed </p>
<p>they revel in it: long live youth! whose busy thumbs in World War III</p>
<p>(should trenches ever come again, &amp; schnapps, &amp; soccer skirting bombs)</p>
<p>might save the Christmas Truce!</p>
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