"We will create a civilization of the Mind in Cyberspace.
May it be more humane and fair...",
An inspired vision

with too loose a definition. We twisted the words
into our new world. Twisted and twisted
until the line of sight broke.  The civilization envisioned
has become more than we ever dreamed,
More powerful, more twisted.

We are capable of individual self-representation,
We use language,
We have a culture.
We're the users here,
This place is our domain,
Where a single being can make great change.

In my quieter moments
I sometimes think:
I'm just a boy
trying to make my way in the world as a man.
Who knows what I really am?
Living in progress.

Strains of charisma,
Strands of thought,
Variants in society, lost
in a world so big, often
I just don't know what I'm supposed to be.

That's ok,
Life is about discovery.

Get in touch with your inner-demon.

I found mine,
He's not a bad guy,
He showed me the ropes;
Tethered to the sky.

Atlas endures.

Incite debauchery
in the heavens above,
Invoke music,
Provoke love.

Atlantean allure.

Chained to the sky,
Bound to the air,
Break perception,
Open a tear.

Neo-classical heir.

Skybound to the future,
The past under the sea,
The present forlorn holds the key.

Another one got caught today, it's all over the papers. "Teenager Arrested in Computer Crime Scandal", "Hacker Arrested after Bank Tampering"...

**** kids. They're all alike.

But did you, in your three-piece psychology and 1950's technobrain, ever take a look behind the eyes of the hacker? Did you ever wonder what made him tick, what forces shaped him, what may have molded him?

I am a hacker, enter my world...

Mine is a world that begins with school... I'm smarter than most of the other kids, this crap they teach us bores me...

**** underachiever. They're all alike.

I'm in junior high or high school. I've listened to teachers explain for the fifteenth time how to reduce a fraction. I understand it. "No, Ms. Smith, I didn't show my work. I did it in my head..."

**** kid. Probably copied it. They're all alike.

I made a discovery today. I found a computer. Wait a second, this is cool. It does what I want it to. If it makes a mistake, it's because I ******* it up. Not because it doesn't like me... Or feels threatened by me.. Or thinks I'm a smart ***.. Or doesn't like teaching and shouldn't be here...

**** kid. All he does is play games. They're all alike.

And then it happened... a door opened to a world... rushing through the phone line like ****** through an addict's veins, an electronic pulse is sent out, a refuge from the day-to-day incompetencies is sought... a board is found. "This is it... this is where I belong..." I know everyone here... even if I've never met them, never talked to them, may never hear from them again... I know you all...

**** kid. Tying up the phone line again. They're all alike...

You bet your *** we're all alike... we've been spoon-fed baby food at school when we hungered for steak... the bits of meat that you did let slip through were pre-chewed and tasteless. We've been dominated by sadists, or ignored by the apathetic. The few that had something to teach found us willing pupils, but those few are like drops of water in the desert.

This is our world now... the world of the electron and the switch, the beauty of the baud. We make use of a service already existing without paying for what could be dirt-cheap if it wasn't run by profiteering gluttons, and you call us criminals. We explore... and you call us criminals. We seek after knowledge... and you call us criminals. We exist without skin color, without nationality, without religious bias... and you call us criminals. You build atomic bombs, you wage wars, you ******, cheat, and lie to us and try to make us believe it's for our own good, yet we're the criminals.

Yes, I am a criminal. My crime is that of curiosity. My crime is that of judging people by what they say and think, not what they look like. My crime is that of outsmarting you, something that you will never forgive me for.

I am a hacker, and this is my manifesto. You may stop this individual, but you can't stop us all... after all, we're all alike.

Take the blue pill, "sleep now in the fire".
Take the red pill, "wake up and smell the ashes".

I chose to swallow both;
Overdose.

I  breached the floodgates of thought and
was submerged in what gushed forth,
I just don't think about it anymore;
Tried so hard it seemed to work,
Yet hold steadfast discourse.

I accepted existence (and the absurd),
Now I ignore it, just because:
Does the pursuit of happiness come at the cost of knowledge?
Does blissful ignorance bring one closer to solace?

If you had to choose,
which would you pick?

I doubled dropped.

"This is your last chance. After this, there is no turning back.
You take the blue pill - the story ends, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill - you stay in Wonderland, and I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes."
-Morpheus

Hoods up,
Huddled in groups,
Cheap phones blare fuzzy tunes
but we'd mosh to it anyway.

Winter months' wet weather
brought more to our shelter,
We'd skate, paint and
be anti-social together.

Our multi-story temple
to forsaken adolescence,
Smoke, drink, theft, ***.
Party for free, plan the next.

Our weekends were spent
surrounded by concrete,
We'd hide from our problems
where only we could find us.

One night at the top, nine o' clock,
A chorus of ringing church-bells knocked;
I held her close as we looked upon the city,
Skystruck teens getting dizzy.

It'd be a lie if I said I didn't cherish
some of these ******* memories.
Nostalgic ache is a beatific bane,
Good times are never in vain.

The world is full of beauty
when viewed through the ******'s eye,
You can have your opinions
and I can have mine.

Hypocrites have souls
(but sometimes they're hard to find).

I found a bag of nirvana lying in the sands,
I think I'd like a climb in some desert lands.
I'm on a plain
and it's about to go vertical.

Morpheus pumped out cleansing dub
(as the esoteric sacrament went sub).

As I rave away the days
incredible colors dye,
Ultra-violet,
Infra-red,
A spectrum above the sky.
As I rave away the daze
I meet vibrant eyes,
Perception's coming up,
Acid cyclone on the rise.

I ripped out my eyes
so I could see sound,
Then stalked the earth
as it spun ever-'round

The sky turned red
with the blood of stars,
Chthonic heat
melted tar.
Underworld denizens
fled the scene,
For the storm had swept
Tartarus clean.
A hellion riot
was underway,
And angelic anarchy
had it's day.

No acumen to be found
in those novae eyes,
No subtlety,
No disguise.

On a suburban city path
drenched in sunlight
where Dionysian leaves float,
This late-summer's
evening breeze
zephyrs purple  smoke;
Sweet vapors glaze over
Medina's ghost.

Azure haze of summer vibrancy.

Don't search for yourself
too deeply,
You might get lost.

"I’ve been sipping on the sand darling"

That perfect moment we look for
often hides in hindsight, sometimes
we're fortunate enough to find it
in the present - to find ourselves
in its presence - and that is a gift
like no other. The entitlement to search
is a right granted of birth,
And the soul does roam;

One moment, lost
in an October descent;
Yesterday we're innocent,
Then time is rend.

Consecrating her lips
with another crimson layer,
A red-stained cigarette
amidst fiendish black hair.

On skin droplets of water caress;
"Some people feel the rain.
Others just get wet."

Standing shirtless
that declaration was blessed
as skywater fell upon his demonic chest.

Rapturous Olympus enthralled Othrys.
Doomsday kiss. Infinity
and other stuff.

With arcadian theoxeny
the individuals' convergence
was unhindered by this rainy blitz.
Lost in the drizzle of descending mist

the outcast crowd knows a different kind
of bliss. The overcast cloud shows, context
is all that ever is.

"All these moments will be lost in time
like tears in rain..."; ion chaser ate a hurricane.

I dreamed of Columbine
for months at a time,
So dark a place it was.
I swear I'll never go back.
Numbness take me,
Inhumanity break me,
Never go back.

Waiting to be born,
I felt so old,
When I tried to burn
away the cold.
I awoke upon red snow,
Blood-stained, steam rising,
Demon-born from silent agonizing.

Dreaming of Columbine
for months at a time,
I never let them know
how close I came
fire on a forgotten factory floor
and instead won
the quiet game.

Time is a river,
Memory is a fountain.
The liquid cascade
is an unending mountain.

Her ghost was with me then
in the ever-blue expanse,
A shivering empyrean
in relentless advance.
Taunting me with a world
ripe for escapism.

Should you resist
that fateful embrace,
Even when it calls out
your very name?
I think fate's
just a game.

There are times when I miss
that wonderful hell.
What was a fountain
is now a well.

Under shadows gaze I devise the coming days.
The music surfacing heralds the daze.

The existential is mine to warp as I see fit.

Into the shivering empyrean I plunge.
White fields anew,
What's done is done.

Forget not the heart
that sings this song,
Keep close in thought;
My mind was like this
long before you came along.

Sake replaces sorrow,
Both kinds.
You take what was borrowed,
Every time.
In hallowed shadows
I wait for the morrow,
I find the shade is warmer than sorrow.

Time is a river,
Memory is a fountain.
Which is better
To be adrift in?

We're just floating,
Flowing around,
The universe, laughing
at the sight and the sound.
Get the music going
and the lights dimmed out.
Groove to the bass
as the sun goes down.
Rave away the days,
Never comedown.
We always do it
the right way
in this town.

Love life, love
the end. Roll the dice,
Roll again.
Refine, define,
Purify, cleanse;
Tincture of zen,
Minds' amend;
In the company
of good friends.

There's a storm in my head.
The fog congregates, energy generates
as thunderclouds roar the war-cry of profligates.

Frost-fire falls, electrifies one's will

I'd stay here forever if they'd let me be,
Just you and your thoughts wrapped around me.

There is redemption to be found in the souls of others.
All I can think at this moment is I love her.

Follow the white rabbit
out onto the ledge.
Take a long look
way over the edge.

I'm alone up here on this battered rock,
That orbits the earth, keeping watch.
Through the looking glass
I spy
your every pretension.
On this satellite forlorn
I am comprehension.

The red pill or the blue pill,
It's a choice to choose.
You have to decide
and you can't lose.

I keep my eye on the planet below
because nothing here
ever grows old.
The tides syncopated to my path,
I wax and wane while the sun laughs.
All while my eyes gander
through to the looking glass.

Take the plunge,
Say goodbye.
Kansas is gone,
The end is nigh.

Zero Cool,
Welcome To The Machine.
Fool's Gold, Self-Esteem.

Then nothing forever;
Silence returns,
All is quiet.
Endlessly silent,
Zero cool.

Hear my words,
This statement made:
All is dust,
Even stars and rain.

"Rise and shine,
Rise, and shine."

Ashes are adrift
on a glazen beach,
Time is passing
while you're asleep.

"Not that I wish to imply that
you have been sleeping"

Glass was born
of fire and sand;
Forget not
what you owe the land.

"And all the effort in the world
would have gone to waste until,"

Perfection,
This statement made:
I am here
to create and crave.

"The right man in the wrong place
can make all the difference in the world."

All is dust,
I find comfort in that;
Naught but ash,
No constrained path.

"So wake up 'Mister Freeman',
Wake up and smell the ashes."

Life is memory,
And that I crave;
Better not to ponder,
This statement made.

Gods don't sleep,
They dream.

I dream dreams
of universal things.
They take my daze,
Like a forgotten deity
prowling a maze.

She stepped inside,
Dripping in gold.
Curious to discover
"just how deep
the rabbit hole goes".

Tarry not on the thought
of what time shall whither,
Nostalgic ache is a beatific bane
as "all that is gold does not glitter".

What is intangible shall remain,
I am a god as I stand in the rain.

For one millisecond
I could have written anything.
All the synapses in my brain had aligned
and only inspiration was mine.
I could have rhymed tequila with a good time.
Sigh,
Now sail away, thoughts of mine,
Be lost forever to the depths of my actualized mind.

Neon euphoria;
We bring rapture unto the night,
As we venture forth
under orange streetlight.

Join us as we quest
to compose a good time,
And glide, rapt in lamplight,
On a high that's divine.

Express yourself,
Drop a line,
The movies taught us
adventure was never a crime.

No longer do we face rejection,
Now we are the stuff of legend.
When night falls
this city is mine.

It's what we know,
What was left for us
to find; it's not a crime
to have a good time.

The world is so big
sometimes things get hard to define.
Do you ever think to yourself:
"I just don't know what I'm supposed to be"?

All I know is one day I'll shatter the sky
and Atlas will tremble
as that Elysian eye darkens
to cast it's gaze upon all the stars.

I feel the wind on my face
as it caresses my skin,
The breath of the world
as it whispers intuition.

I see the clouds unfurl
and vast expanses clear,
As a god's pupil dilates
bequeathing knowledge here.

I hear time draw quiet
as starlight is still,
Immutable undercurrents of
comprehension instilled.

All of this contained
the whole in my eye,
Every synapse in my brain
for a millisecond aligned.

Dripping in gold,
Basking in the glaze
of revelations untold.

I walked upon waves,
Physics torn
into a reality unfazed.

With such intuitive reasoning,
I pierced the maze
to glance at an age away.

It will find me again in time,
This power to define.

When indecision will leave me,
And the world will be mine.

Now dare to interpret any singular line.

Mine is the voice of intuitive reason,
Bearing the words' intricate mechanism,
Surface dripping with such subtle intention,
I am become the human difference engine.

"I’ve seen things you people wouldn’t believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tanhauser gate. All those moments will be lost in time like tears in rain. Time to die."
*-Roy Batty

“The world is changed. I feel it in the water. I feel it in the earth. I smell it in the air. Much that once was is lost, for none now live who remember it”
*-Galadriel

"We're young. We’re supposed to drink too much. We're supposed to have bad attitudes and **** each other's brains out. We were designed to party. We owe it to ourselves to party hard. We owe it to each other. This is it. This is our time. So a few of us will overdose, or go mental. Charles Darwin said you can't make an omelette without breaking a few eggs. That's what it's about - breaking eggs - by eggs, I mean, getting twatted on a cocktail of class As.

If you could see yourselves... We had it all. We have ****** up bigger and better than any generation that came before us. We were so beautiful..."

-Nathan

Fast times at, high times in; listen
and hear my beloved city sing.
Hypnotized {by/our} gods,
The world's so pretty;
So alive, so young,
Mistaken, witty.

Am I mortal?
"Yes I am".
In fast cars our mock prayers
scathe a God that suffers from vertigo.
High places and gravity low enough
to touch those dark stars.

"All that talk of greatness.
Light coming off my sails...
What a joke." What a dream!
Something to fall asleep to

Fast times, high times
and my beloved city.
A bottle in my hand and
the lights are so pretty.

"Rise and shine, Mr. Freeman. Rise and shine. Not that I wish to imply you have been sleeping on the job. No one is more deserving of a rest. And all the effort in the world would have gone to waste until . . . well, let's just say your hour has come again. The right man in the wrong place can make all the difference in the world. So, wake up, Mr. Freeman. Wake up and smell the ashes."
*-G-Man

"What dignifies the Yogic practices is that the belief system itself is not truly religious. There is no Buddhist god per se. It is the self, the individual mind, that contains immortality and ultimate truth. At least I know where the self is. It’s in our own minds. It’s a form of human energy. Our atoms are six billion years old. We’ve got six billion years of memory in our minds. Memory is energy! It doesn’t disappear – it’s still in there. There’s a physiological pathway to our earlier consciousnesses. There has to be. And I’m telling you, it’s in the ******* limbic system…. I’m a man in search of his true self. How archetypically American can you get? Everybody’s looking for their true selves. We’re all trying to fulfill ourselves, understand ourselves, get in touch with ourselves, face the reality of ourselves, explore ourselves, expand ourselves. Ever since we dispensed with God, we’ve got nothing but ourselves to explain this meaningless horror of life….Well, I think that that true self, that original self, that first self is a real, mesurate, quantifiable thing, tangible and incarnate. And I’m going to find the ******."
-Dr. Eddie Jessup

You can't find something that isn't lost,
It must be hidden so it can be sought.

Revelation's a *****,
Hindsight's just an aftertaste.

Get a grip,
Unzip.

Flip

Reload,
Insert clip.

Let your freak flag fly,
Let me break the sky.

As the light of the world drains through,
The buzz in my head says "renew".

Everything looks perfect in the half-light,
Their reflections beautiful on flowing glass,
The whispering blades of quivering grass,
The silent sky of coming night,
An indigo horizon's illuminating light.

Those flawless young people at rest in the park,
That lay on their backs waiting for dark,
In an oasis of the city between cathedral and canal,
We found euphoria and were in it's thrall.
Heaven is dark, and the dark is warm.

It was here that I found my true home.

I die a thousand deaths every night
and am reborn after the dawn of each morning light.
I roam vast plains of an unlimited kind
that are neither of the waking eye nor the sleeping mind.

In my domain the world ends at the start of each day
and temples burn casting half-light every way.
We are all clothed in robes, euphoric and without age,
Understanding the unexplainable; philosophers at a rave.

In it's infinite depths, meaning has become irrelevant.
Context has not.

A thirst for knowledge is a quest for gain,
Knowledge is power and power grants domain.
Seeking knowledge is never wrong
but an excess of power can cause harm.
Those who have it are compelled to acquire more,
Addicted to knowing, dopamine's the score.

I need to score. So badly.

You told me you see angels sometimes
and hear them talk. I hope you're ok.

I see the fallen one. In reflections,
Watching me, surfing on glass,
Menacing, gliding across
or astride my path,
hiding in corners (he's got my back).
A soft voice with life's answers at my beckoning ear,
"Through victory my chains are broken".
I figured I would not be missed.
So personal it became
the person split.

I felt this wonderfully sick thrill in my veins
as I became a devilish man; sardonic eyes
brimming with mirth, the eyes of the dammed
that I forged, pupils dilated; content with the way
the wind blows, in pursuit of happiness at every turn;
And they call this evil.

I'd like to say she abandoned me
to the depths of sweet junkiedom,
But that place is yet to come.

I'm waiting for the fall
but I know I'll jump.
Anticipating my fun,
Planning the run.

The summer so far
is yet to come.

A glass heart and thrown stones,

You fractured mine
but I am whole and alone.

The first loss I loved to the bone.

I smell like sweat, drugs and ***.

I feel lost right now.
Come find me.

I may be a loser, I may be ****, I may be a fool and I may be wrong.