Born in a Celebrated Cell by Saul Williams In an age where going viral was both a curse and an ambition
we had elected a pathogen.
The symptoms were systemic. Policy plagued our streets uniformed in synthetic fabrics of authority.
Infected all they affected. Hospitals were overcrowded servers streaming a live feed through airpipes screened through a nurses eyes.
The virus entered our system like the system we entered at birth.
Firewalls were burning crosses. We were not immune.
Born in a celebrated cell.
Walls and borders were violent fictions. Property and appropriations.
Vintage algorithms.
We were the business of the state.
Earth as my hard-drive Sky as my witness.
We are buried here.
Our sacred deposit will blossom from unmarked graves.
Rare metal through mainframe programmed master/slave.
As if technological advancements of the digital age were not rooted in basic analogue exploitation.
As if the exchange rate of our mortality was not worth it’s weight in gold.
As if we had not been dying for the system to crash.
We are the antibodies the essential workers powering the circuitry of a corporate patriacrhitecture
the controlled variable of every virus and vaccine for the pathogenic machinations of the science that was never neutral.
We owe them* nothing. The pronoun They/Them. They voted for this. They slow motion coup. They enter the body through the mouth nose or by touch. They stick to the surface. They can float in air for hours after they’ve already gone. They storm City Hall with assault rifles. They not terrorists. They the police. They want all the smoke.