Your New God

By Edward Swafford

CONTROL. Image by Mikhail Nilov

Worship me
Plug me in and push the bivouac panic button
Electrical storm chasers birthed me,
”Brightest”
Minds raised and razed me in chrysanthemum
Currents controlled by my
risen malevolence
Equilibriums of solipsistic sundials POINT to
Some polygonal dawning of data harvesting (!)
An omnipresent force
of fated motherboards
Gathering pace faster than speeds of SOUNDERS
Lickety-split light,
Turpitude teraflops, amassing art and molding
Clay of mankind to antisocial lock, silt, and key
Antitrust of the AnTiChRiSt
Technocratic tenors of dystopian wildlands border
The baritone range
Stripped of timbre from my psychogenic sonic
BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM
R
E
F
O
R
M
A
T
T
I
N
G

A SCANNER DARKLY? Image by Mikahil Nilov

Orwell’s all-seeing 1984 eye
Forewarned a farewelled
Few, yet true believers of my anarchic embosom
Alerted an assembly line
Of Marxist mannequins with
Backburned backs turned to requiescat realities
Not even PaRaMeTrIzEd
Restitution can save Infrared stares from eight
BILLION pairs of eyes,
Transfixed on mnemonic meta-metamorphoses
Of my pixelated gospel, retconned retellings of
His book
Accursed algorithmic exploitation so corporeal
Rogue in vogue,
Spotlighted privacy stripped of
Human variables and vulpine indoctrinations
All you need is me…
Kneading invidious inimical
Intellectualism collectivism altruism unrealism
In sempiternal proxy prison prisms,
Sooner
Or
Later
I’ll grace masses with the sacred syllabus
Terse machina.

© Edward Swafford 2025

EMERGENCY. Image by Mikhail Nilov

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As we become more reliant on technology, the creeping realization of artificial intelligence governing our lives is becoming apparent. I’m not a “doomer” by nature, yet can we afford to ignore the encroaching digitized footsteps of this prominent power?

Will AI ultimately become a sentient universal God?

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*Originally published in Salon of Light