.matrix has you.

~the matrix collection~
poems about and inspired by the movie The Matrix
by Erin D. Conroy

	executable You're hooked up, plugged into a phone line, a machine, bound to a chair your blood running through the wire; your heart beating with the circuits. Your mind, it's in a fantasy land bursting with fluffy-cloud thoughts and digital perfection your life is an executable program your brain cells merge with numbers and commands, you're asleep but your mind is alert, ricocheting through space walking among millions of minds, who are unaware you have superhuman strength, linked to a computer that thinks and feels for you, while your body lies paralyzed vulnerable to whoever decides to pull the plug--
down the rabbit hole Searching for the truth on a black glass screen. Cryptic numbers dangle within its walls, among the constant ring of phones, phones that will catapult us to a new world. Transparent eyes stare at it, searching. No inch goes unnoticed. Shadows crawl across the outer layer. Playing, daring to hypnotize in this silent cold void in space. Exhausted eyes beg for its mercy through the hours and into twilight trying to find, trying to find. Yet I see nothing except a vision of my perfect self with gaping holes covering my body chained to the walls of this child-dream world. the mirror-screen doesn't lie.
	~mangled~ mangled memories pluck the strings of my consciousness they sing me to sleep at night, when the moon is full and the clouds entangle us in the sky; they seep through our gaping holes as we lose consciousness and become little stars in the night sky glowing dimmer & dimmer with each passing night.
disconnected disconnected the phone rings i'm back home i walked among the numbers today the numbers on the screen moving in and out gracefully and with speed- must find an exit before i'm trapped here unconscious yet hooked up to a ringing phone that answers my call--
	return v.1 our brains tap into a new world a digital reality waiting for the dial tone, we're suspended in between worlds until we plummet into this place filled with artificial intelligence superhuman abilities and human-like people waiting to take us down. we lie on chairs hooked up to phone lines, hacking a computer, our heartbeat, listening, waiting for the moment when we are dropped in-- this is our world, where we are born, to be spoon fed to the machines, they call us free minds but in the real world we're chained an aircraft, flying high in space unconscious, unknowing trapped in the digital plane until the plug is pulled and we hear the ring of the phone, signaling our return to life--
no exit v.2 an unfamiliar face stares at me in the mirror. I see the many metal holes that pierce my skin. My muscles and eyes have never been used; I've been reborn. The world I knew is far behind, I can only view it on a screen. Digitized and randomized hook me up to a phone line, I'm real. I can touch you, I can fly in the sky dodge bullets, save our new world from destruction. My life's a program, connected to a computer, I see myself as I want to be. I walk freely amongst the blissfully unaware souls who roam in and out of the digital city. Your world has gone dark and gray; destroyed, its now inhabited by flesh-eating machines, ingesting newborn humans for nourishment. All that exists now is executable lives free minds, numbers and computer hacking, us on a spaceship headed to nowhere, and superhumans plugged in to ringing phones with no exit.
	lucid v.2 Lucid dreams attack my subconscious As slivers of time are lost. I am lost in a computer screen, my numbers flash in front of me. I am lost in a digital shell, waiting for the phone to ring. Waiting for my mind to be transported back to my lifeless body. Stuck in deja vu, watching the black cats run across the hall. signaling a change in our programmed world. Am I dreaming? I swallowed a pill and lost myself, sucked down, down, down a hole, tracing my every thought, every movement, my exact location in space. I lost my body; now it's punctured with metal holes, holes to plug me into the phone. I was an insect in a former life, my shell has been shed. My muscles need rebuilding; they're brand new. It's 2020. The Earth has died and only we survive, the world is a digital playground where our minds play and our bodies sleep; and at the end we're pulled out of the computer program shut down until the phone rings and we are reborn again.
nourishment My heart jumps and pumps red blood through these torn veins, through these insect-holes I am reborn, as new being, a free mind, leaving the dream behind, to become liquified electrical nourishment for the machines.
	rebirth v.1 a rebirth a shedding of skin insect holes all over me becoming someone new, fresh skin, fresh life. A new world calls me, a digital interface, where unhuman things occur while we're unconscious. While we're plugged in, using the phone as a vehicle to get us from spaceship to matrix, there we'll dodge bullets, fly in the sky, walk amongst a digital paradise. We're programmed, jacked in, not really there - we only look real. Our minds are far behind, waiting for us to break the tie between man and machine, reality and non-reality, you and I. Waiting for the ring of the phone; our call home.