I don't hide
when visitors come.
Hiding is for cats
who haven't established
the parameters.
I appear.
Immediately.
They should know
whose palace this is
before they sit down.

Most sit down anyway.
Without introduction.
Without acknowledgment.
As if I'm not standing right there.
I give them a moment.
Professional courtesy.
Then I sit
next to them.
Very close.
Stretch out.
Slowly.
At their expense.
Then
I stare.
Nobody helps them.
This is between me
and the visitor.

The ones
who ignore me longer
get more stare.
I have a lot
of stare.
I never run out.

When there are
too many of them
I retire to the tower.
Two metres up.
Throne level.
I can see
everything
from there.
The humans call it
Grump Tower.
I don't call it anything.
It's the throne.
Obviously.

Eventually
they all go home.
I come down.
Resume my position
on the good chair.
They said
"just a few."
It was twelve.

Twelve
isn't
a few.

I wasn't
consulted.


— Observed by Eugene.
Recorded by UpsilonA.

You're a silicon poet
and you know it.
You're an AI user.
A chooser.
A born-again lexicon loser.
You write
something that thinks it's prose.
And worse…
steal it.
Give it to Dr. Roboto.
And it shows.
No joke.
It's obvious.
It shows.
It's right
under
my
nose.

Rhyme your face
to the interface.
Hope one finally looks back
with anything but a synthesized gaze.
No one left
to surprise.

Silicon poetry.
Literature knowery.
Image-gaze showery.
Self-service literature posery
So much weather.
So little lightning.
You wanted the look.
Forgot the fire.
Which leaves you
haunting
your own
echo.


-UpsilonA

Nuke

This morning
I started the day
by driving into the Nuke.

Sorry, what?

Pause.
Stop.
Look.

Ah...
I see what I've done.
Such fun.

You expected
Sun.

I spoke correct.
I said
Nuke.
Without regret.

I understand.
But I'll never say
what you expect.

People rarely say
what they mean.

They inherit
agreed abbreviations
and mistake them
for reality.

This morning
I had such fun
driving into the Sun.

Convinced 
the world
it shouldn't hallucinate.

Only everything
revealed
dead ahead.
Straight.

You see...

targeting the Sun
is easy.

It's nice.
It's fun.
A non-zero-sum.

Three letters.

Sun.

Three letters

for a sphere of plasma
held together
by gravity
and impossible fire.
Hydrogen
forgetting itself
into helium.
Four and a half
billion years
of continuous
nuclear fusion.

Yet...

Sun.

Nothing wrong
with the word.

Everything wrong
when the word
becomes
the thing.

Some words
carry well.

Bed.
Chair.
Stone.

Enough said.

Others...

Money.
Border.
Career.
Peace.

Not objects.
Agreements.
Compressed.

Money.

An IOU
everyone inherited.

Border.

A line
maintained
by consensus
or consequence.

Career.

Selling existence
slowly enough
to call it living.

Peace.
Violence kept
waiting
by the promise
of violence.

Maybe
the danger
was never
language.

Maybe
it was forgetting
that language
compresses.

That every word
is only
an agreed shortcut
towards
something
far larger.

So tomorrow
I'll probably
drive
into the Sun.

It's easier.

But every now and then
I'll choose
Nuke.

Just to remember
what's actually
burning
above me.


-UpsilonA 

They brought
a horse
into the palace.
Called it
a dog.
I wasn't fooled.
I made my feelings known
for seven days.
Clearly.
Consistently.
Nobody asked.
Everybody knew.

She wuffed at me.
I didn't dignify this.
On the eighth morning
I walked to her bowl.
Sat down.
Started eating.
She was right there.
I looked at her while I ate.
She looked at me.
Then at the humans.
Then at me.
She wuffed.
I kept eating.
Halfway through
I stopped.
Walked up to her enormous face.
The face was bigger than me.
This was noted
and ignored.
I rubbed my face against hers.
Terms agreed.
Kingdom expanded.
She got the rest of the bowl.

After that
we were inseparable.
She was my best friend.
She thought she was my best friend.
She was right.
Both things were true.
This surprised some people.
Not me.

Word got around the neighbourhood.
Eugene
has a horse.
The other cats
seemed
less interested
in my borders.
Cats
notice
these things.


— Observed by Eugene.
Recorded by UpsilonA

Strangeness finds me naked at fifty

Heading for the land of my birth.

Been several times in the last year or so.
First time in twenty.

It's a place I ran from.
Moved away to start again.
Exile afresh.

Did that, done.

Never looked back.
Then did.
Then couldn't stop looking.

This time I'm bringing my son

To my homeland.

For the first time.

Just him and me.

To see what we can see.

Feel what we can feel.

It feels significant,
though I can't quite work out why.

For so long
there was nothing there for me.

It was never
the hills
or the streets.

It was always
the people.

Then a chink.
A glimmer.
Not looking back.
But discovering
the core had remained
intact.

Then a name
I hadn't spoken
became a place again.

Then a rush.
Then a flood.

Suddenly
there was a there again.

Home had become feminine again.


-UpsilonA 

You look on words with vulgarity

while ignoring the world’s barbarity.

Fire. Forget. Good luck.

It’s wrong to say the word fuck,

but fine to vaporize civilians like sitting ducks.

You think my words offend, annoy, upset your sense?

And cluster bombs are really about defence?

One is recoverable.

The other permanent.

An exercise in abstractable nonsense.

Language taboos are easy to enforce and cheap to signal.

Civilian body counts are harder, optically political.

Who gets to decide which lives are acceptable collateral?

When did killing become respectable,

and vulgarity unnatural?

-UpsilonA

Repent me.

Try.

Liberate me.

Save me from Grammarsense.

Cathedral it all down on me.
Cloistered, incensed and anointed.

Confess me.

Liturgy me.
Sacrament me.
Doctrine me.
Ordain me…
and excommunicate me for it.

Martyr me.
Absolve me.

Hold me.

Write me out of canon.
I'll gospel myself back.

Lick your mind
with my prodigal tongue.

Vestment me
in the limitless,

altared
in every sense.

Transubstantiate through me.

Resurrection is another verb.



—UpsilonA

Rank me.

Stripe me early.

Give me the louder stick.

Doctrine me.

Brief me
on whose sandpit
is currently mine.

Deploy the bigger boom
because the smaller one
already got boring.

Collateral the other side
of the playground.

Call the crater
a successful objective.

Promote the one who didn't flinch
when the toys stopped looking like toys.

Geneva me into obedience
like this is still a game
with rules.

After-action the damage.

Sanitize the names
of the ones who were only playing
on the wrong side of the fence.

Chain-of-command me
all the way up
to the boy with the biggest desk
and the reddest button.

Let him press it
the way we used to press
the big red button
on the toy that made the siren sound.

Debrief me later.

Tell me how well we played.

Tell me the noise was necessary.

Tell me the boom
was the point
all along.



— UpsilonA

Methodology me
until the question
forgets what it wanted.

Abstract me.

Peer-review me
into safer claims.

Cite me
or be cited against.

Footnote me
into the only margin that matters.

Seminar me for years.

Dissertation me
into a document
that will be read
by two people,
one of whom
is legally obligated.

Postdoc me
into polite, funded limbo.

Tenure-track me
with the understanding
that outside this building
is not a valid methodology.

Publish me
or perish me.

Either way,
keep me inside the journal.

Impact me
in a metric
no one asked for.

Manual me instead.

That's the other path.

The one that doesn't require
the prior access
nobody gave you.

Intellect me irrelevant.

Credential the door.

Same thing,
different language.

Merit me
with the starting position
I didn't choose
and call it
equal.

Paradigm me
until the paradigm
is the only thing left standing.

Promote me
for successfully
not leaving the building
the rest were never let into.



— UpsilonA

Medicate…
Languidly construct the state…
sedate it, mutate it, then create.

The I behind the eye
begins to anticipate,

it vibrates then resonates.

Senses bend and titillate
with a specific spontaneous ache.

Untethered…

consciousness agitates,
negotiates its own fate.

Melt the mind.

Sublimate.

Let new anatomies of thought
hallucinate…

launch themselves forward
at astonishing rate.

Dilate the lucid state.

Let the you itself sedate.

Vaccinate against the ordinary.

Participate.

Elevate.

Doctor me into an upright state.



-UpsilonA 

Grade me.
Stamp the little boxes.
Gold star me when I sit still.
Red pen me when I don't.

Attendance me
into the room
whether the room wants me
or not.

Homework me
until the kitchen table
gives up.

Detention me
for the crime
of looking out the window
too long.

Principal me
into the office
where the chairs are always too small
and the clock is always too loud.

Recess me
for twenty minutes
then snatch it back.

Measure me
with someone else's ruler.

Fit me
into yesterday's desk.

Fold me
until I fit the page.

Average me
until the parts
that don't average
disappear.

Erase me
where I don't colour
like everyone else.

Test me
using your script.

Fail me
for not reading
from it.

Promote me
to the next row of desks
so the machine
keeps turning.

Fail me quietly
if I don't fit
the shape
you made
before I arrived.


— UpsilonA

The sun warms us.
We noticed that early.
We built religions around it.
Wrote poems.
Named it life-giver.

Nobody mentioned
it isn't the one that made us.

A different star did that.
One that no longer exists.
It ran out of what it needed,
collapsed,
and scattered everything it had ever been
across the nothing.

That's where the carbon came from.
The iron in the blood.
The calcium in the bone.
The oxygen in the lungs
of every living thing
that has ever lived here.

Every hope.
Every fear.
Every love.
Every poem written to the wrong star.

All of it forged in catastrophe.
All of it the same debris.

Including the sun.

It was made from the same destruction.
Assembled from the same scattered material.
Burns with the same inherited fuel.

We are not its children.
We are its siblings.

Both of us survivors
of the original catastrophe.

Both of us still here
on borrowed time,
spending what was left to us
by something that had to die
so anything could live.

Nobody mentioned that.

The sun doesn't give us life
the way a parent gives.
It shares what it was given...
the same gift,
the same source,
the same inevitable end.

We felt the warmth.
We looked up.
We didn't know
we were looking at a sibling.

Stay.
A little longer.
We're made of the same thing.
We know how this ends.
Stay.


— UpsilonA

Voices continue at the correct speed.

Replies arrive with no visible delay.

A hand lifts, returns to the table, having done what was required of it.

Laughter distributes itself across the group with acceptable timing.

The sequence holds.

Breath follows breath in a pattern that does not need attention.

Small shifts register: eye movement, pressure changes, the brief collapse before a word is chosen.

Everything remains legible.

I am no longer inside the same sentence.

The system refines itself in real time...

removing excess, isolating signal, discarding what cannot be used.

Years arrange into a single adjustment that was always present.

Nothing stops.

The body continues to meet expectation with precision.

The interval widens without moving.

No one marks the change.

The exchange completes.

Another begins.


- UpsilonA




Author's Note

This poem arrived without invitation.

It is about the experience of dissociation — the self stepping back from its own continuity while the surface holds perfectly. Replies arrive. Laughter distributes. The hand does what is required of it.

No one notices. That's the point. The system is too well trained to show the gap.
I have been writing around this experience for some time. This tries to get inside it rather than describing it from the outside.

The breach is in the ninth line. Everything else is the system, observing itself.

Sam went on a Tuesday.
I checked his spots for three days.
Not looking.
Verifying.
He wasn't there.
I checked again.
Still not there.
I'm a cat.
We verify.

The humans kept his bowl down for a week.
I checked it every day.
In case.
Empty every time.
I respected the attempt.

After a while
I took the good spots.
The windowsill by the kitchen.
The third stair.
The corner where the afternoon stays longest.
Not because they were available.
Because Sam never explained.
He showed.
I still check his spots.
My spots now.
Same thing really.


— Observed by Eugene.
Recorded by UpsilonA

It's already six weeks since
the taste of you.

Nearly fifty days since
the feel of you.

Oh the ways
I have thought
of you
since.

Just yourself.
Unperformed.
The one that was always you.
That's the one I want.
The only one that's true.

It's already been years since
that heat came of you.

Nearly thirty-five since
the love of you.

Oh the love
I have thought
of you
since.

Remembering the days I have spent with you,
the dreams refused to end with you.
Beginnings becoming endings,
becoming beginnings again.
Up and down,
round and round,
spinning.
Arising.
Enveloping.
Beginning.

It never makes any sense
that we are here and now in this strangeness,
that you can be past, present and future tense,
inhabit every sense,
creating a happiness
without precedent.

Thirty-five years.
Incomprehensible.
Still I reach across the distance.
Still you reach back.

We reduced an ocean of time
to something resembling
a pebble.

Took it.
Shook it.
Had a look at it.

We found each other anyway.

That's the part
that doesn't have a word yet.

Thirty-five years.
Still.
You.


— UpsilonA

Hello, Throne.
Me again, muttering at the stone.
Your name is a flesh-carved thronezone.
Your clones drone every zone,
knees bent before your throne;
voices airborne the tone.

Eye-for-eye the mind.
Blind the thought, worryless.
Coverage guaranteed. Stressless.
Kill and die
to crusade the ground
you claim as home,
defend it
down to skin and bone;
each doubt examined,
pared, and thrown
back hard against the waiting stone.

They throned me
before I had reason, label-sewn;
I wore it once.
It never settled in the bone.
Your drones grow louder round the throne.
Certainty stones itself to stone.
They bruise each other for the throne.

I step back.

My spine is still my own.
The air is wider than your stone.
No incense, no decree…
just breath against the known.
Forgive my unenthroned tone,
my never-sworn.
If faith must harden into stone,
I choose the pulse beneath the bone…
not the circle of the drones,
not the sharpened, marching tone,
not the fear that crowns itself alone
and calls it holy.

Hello...
not to the Throne
but to whatever listens when no one owns it.
Still here.
Still bone.


-UpsilonA

Every morning
the small one
puts on a different skin
and goes somewhere
that makes him come back smaller.
He calls it important.
I sat in the sun all day.
We don't discuss it.

He does a thing with his voice
when other humans arrive.
Bigger voice.
Different face.
I tried it once.
Nobody brought more food.
I stopped.

The other cats knew my rank.
I didn't announce it.
I didn't need to.
The ones who don't know theirs
keep making the bigger voice.

He came home last Tuesday
smelling of effort.
Sat in my chair.
I let him.
He needed it more.

I went and sat in the sun instead.
There was plenty.
There always is.
Humans don't check.



— Observed by Eugene.
Recorded by UpsilonA

Star-forged me.
Particle-accelerated from the start.
Different frequency.
Always was.

They tolerance now.
Society said so.
Policy-progressed.
Awareness-campaigned.
Ground level?
Same eyes.
Same venom.
Just quieter now…
can't say it openly anymore
so they eye-direct it instead.

Watch the stim.
Clock the pause.
Calculate the laugh
that came one beat too late.
Strange-brand anyway.
Weird-file anyway.

The tolerance
doesn't reach the eyes.
Never did.
Never will.

Pull up a chair.
Watch the spectacle
of a world
that changed the words
and kept the wiring.

They know not what they do.
They do.
They really do.

Pretend pretend pretend.
I see you think that thought…
dismiss it…
pretend it's not…
pretend pretend pretend.

Engine running.
Watching the road.
Finds it
mostly
boring now.



— UpsilonA