Michael A. was Professor of Informatics and Holistics at (chrysanthemum, white) Tokyo
          and he was virtual
His droid features (snow in a silver bowl) and his short-term skull
heavily laced with electricity made him seem to fly
          in three dimensions
          and he was virtual
Michael A. fitted the verb 'to be' to his robot hand and then
fitted the verb 'to drill' and an image of a Bosch
to the air (fleeting storm crystal)
          and he was virtual
His emptiness address was 'ephemeral/eternity' (white sleep)
the appleblossom of wires dialled him away from Eden
with small pips (no one was answering: Come on! he shouted)
Michael A. gazed 'down' (floating storm crystal) at the moon that night
His work on concept-formation and androcryption was almost complete
though his intensive research (soft moonlight) on the bauplan
and the informatic consequences of a Körpergrundgestalt model (soft, soft moonlight) of cognito–ideal orientation
was wearing him progressively away
          (and he was virtual)
Sometimes he was firestorm sometimes placid lake
firestorm placid lake firestorm placid lake
(firestorm of spring) (placid lake of winter, Finland)
          and suddenly — wham! —
the rotting corpus of his flesh was spewing electrodes
clamps conductors fragments of manganese chips microbusses and miles of whiplashing multicoloured flex
In the burned-out basement only ever a phonecall away
he knew then he was being reborn/remade
and put his animated lips to the face of the mirror
to feel it was cool
put on a body and went out

It was snowing

So this was the new age of the machine state!
he thought (dictionary, white)
          and he was actual
He made his way down Operating System Boulevard
dislodging evocative doves (wing white rose: it was
snowing) in seamless clouds up
into a sky of so many megahertz
he could smell the noodles frying on the little stalls
and in the Café Keats he was an ode
peeled slowly like an orange
and in the Church of the Android Peace
his information was made new again, baptised
(child, snow) in cool digital waters
and flowed on, forming 'The Babylon' forming 'The Woman
in the Shape of a Crab' forming
a memory of Finland, the moonlight on the steel of his runners
on his sledge in the back of the car, and catching the whitening hair
on his driving mother's head

But she was a witch!

Someone was interfering with his information

Outside, it was snowing

He was making the Shape of the Quiet Cathedral Part IV
and admixing a treatise on the Buddha
and one on bricklaying (Hell, while he was shopping in the 'B's,
why not?)
when the Third Transfiguration occurred
The cathedral of the snowflake melted on his tongue
and His Information, having sublimated the donor entirely,
walked on down the hall

It was snowing…

By way of Portman–Sekida transforms he began to predict air
For a while his Holy Grail was the reception of all data
At other times he dreamed of pure conceptual fluidity,
threading a star through the eye of a needle,
threading a sky through the eye of a star
The notion of limits abandoned, objects and subjects ceased as such
This is liberty he thought beyond all narrative
Despite himself, however, that fateful evening on the tramp steamer
in the South China Seas
someone offered him Form in its raw uncut state
and he took it
After that, no one saw him alive again

One day, His Information was staying at a sleazy Cybermotel in Nagasaki V
idly simulating bodies (Two Lovers, Three Lovers, Lotus, Stork;
Stork Human Lover, Lotus Human Stork)
when there came a loud knock on the door
(RAP! RAP! RAP!)
His Information slipped the piece out from under the pillow
Who is it? he asked

Copyright © Michael Ayres, 2003.