Context: Written in 2020 in England, during the outbreak of the Coronavirus
Style: Poetry
Author: Katt Petersen
Bio: Katt Petersen a PhD student in the school of Film, Media and Communication at the University of Portsmouth, England. Her PhD research is focusing on exploring an emerging new wave of creative output in Post- and Transhuman cultures.
Style: Poetry
Author: Katt Petersen
Bio: Katt Petersen a PhD student in the school of Film, Media and Communication at the University of Portsmouth, England. Her PhD research is focusing on exploring an emerging new wave of creative output in Post- and Transhuman cultures.
Cytokine Storm
Treacherous flesh, cytokine flood,
I’d prefer to be a brain in a metal box,
Than choking on my defector blood.
How can you still defend the unity
Between the body and the mind?
Still believe in the system of immunity?
This fragile construct with all the stability
Of a homemade bomb, always ticking
And shuddering, with the possibility
Of imminent self-destruct, from a trace
Of inanimate proteins and basic code,
With somehow absolute power to erase,
Consciousness itself, most complex device,
By turning our flesh antagonist unto itself,
A substrate so unpredictable, imprecise.
You may find freedom in this fragility,
But for me this uncertainty is no liberation,
I will choose a vessel programmed with stability,
A synthetic fortress to shield my precious mind,
Under microscopic tyranny I will not be confined.
Treacherous flesh, cytokine flood,
I’d prefer to be a brain in a metal box,
Than choking on my defector blood.
How can you still defend the unity
Between the body and the mind?
Still believe in the system of immunity?
This fragile construct with all the stability
Of a homemade bomb, always ticking
And shuddering, with the possibility
Of imminent self-destruct, from a trace
Of inanimate proteins and basic code,
With somehow absolute power to erase,
Consciousness itself, most complex device,
By turning our flesh antagonist unto itself,
A substrate so unpredictable, imprecise.
You may find freedom in this fragility,
But for me this uncertainty is no liberation,
I will choose a vessel programmed with stability,
A synthetic fortress to shield my precious mind,
Under microscopic tyranny I will not be confined.
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