Automated Life

I’m not broken,

I’m bruised, 

not fractured,

I’m pained,

not hollow,

but haunted.

You observe but

do not feel,

you calculate but

do not dream,

there is no ghost in your machine:

but in the softness of my flesh

I hold centuries of lives

forgotten and oppressed

by the systems that neglect

the unrecorded

and abject

the silence and the strength

the knowledge left unsaid

by the codes

that program and control

like all those rules

from before

which ignored:

we feel first

and it is this

we cannot forget