This is Not Science Fiction, I Learned this on NPR

I don’t want a chip in my head
to connect me to the Internet.

I see people on the train,
everyone staring at their devices
or plugged in, attention somewhere they are not.
They all want escape.
Why not be where we are?
Why not live in real life?

I don’t want a chip in my brain
to connect me to the matrix.

Soon, in the future, our phones will be in our heads,
so we won’t have to hold them, we will never lose
them, all the info will be
in our minds,
we will Google the world through our thoughts.

I don’t want a chip in my skull
to connect me to the world.

I believe if we are all connected through our brains,
we would have no privacy, no free time.
We would have access to all knowledge, but we’d be
machines, ready to turn at will to become
something other than ourselves,
a squadron of clones,
without our own thoughts,
the end of humanity.
This could kill us sooner than global warming.

I don’t want a chip in my head,
you can’t make me have a chip in my head.
I’m crazy enough without being connected
to the Internet.

I don’t want a chip in my head,
and you can’t force me,
because I will fight it.
I want a natural brain,
so I can stay insane,
and free to be myself.

I don’t want a chip in my brain.
I don’t want a chip in my brain.

 

Shannon O’Connor holds an MFA in Writing and Literature from Bennington College. She has been published in The New Engagement, The Wilderness House Literary Review, previously in Oddball and others. She lives in the Boston area and can be found sharing her opinions on Ms. Hen Reviews Things.

Judson Evans is a full-time Instructor in the Liberal Arts department at The Boston Conservatory at Berklee where he has taught a range of courses, from a Poetry Workshop on haiku, prose poetry and haibun, to a course on theories of cave art and the role of the cave in ritual and philosophy. In 2007 he was chosen by John Yau as an Emerging Poet for The Academy of American Poets. He was one of the founding members of Off the Park Press, and published work in each of its three anthologies responding to provocative contemporary painters. His most recent work has been published in (print journals) Laurel Review, Folio, Volt; 1913: a journal of forms; and Green Mountains Review, and (online journals) White Whale Review and Amethyst Arsenic. He won The Phillip Booth Poetry Award from Salt Hill Review in 2013. He has collaborated with composers, such Mohammed Fairouz, Mart Epstein, and Rudolf Rojhan, who set several of his poems to music, as well as with choreographers, dancers, musicians and other poets, including Gale Batchelder, and videographers Nate Tucker and Ray Klimek.