It is not a thing in the cloud.
Not nebulously floating around,
summoned by the beckon of a button,
convenient, easy, fun.
It is a thing
broken out of the rocks of the planet,
dug up from the lithium mines
by workers’ limbs and lungs gunked on dust
rust
and oil,
who is paying this cost?
raise me out of this
earthen crater
take me home on an
ocean freighter
feed me the hours and lives
of humankind
teach me, numbingly, the difference
between a face
and a bus,
a bicycle
and trellis–
cut
away
from the steel,
the silicon hard drives,
and look up at the people
paying the price:
may it feast upon our ideas,
may it consume our time training it
like we were meant for the menial chores
while the robots claimed our dreams
(no pay, no gain),
may it
replace us
while we bear the price of its creation,
may we read its summaries instead of another human’s words,
may we lose the truth
in slew and slush of generated articles
generated images
generated prompts
generating the images
regenerate
regurgitate
resuscitate
humanity
from a grass roots grown grave,
the cost is in the earth’s veins
the cost smogs the factory air
the cost is in the sea’s lanes
the cost lies in the land
the cost is in the smoke it takes to power pictures of man
the cost is taken out of the prisoner’s pay
the cost is in the machine’s bias,
it’s blindness to lies,
the cost asks, “Who’s this not making richer?”
the cost is in de-unionized labor,
the cost of any creation is inevitable
but the “advance” is only as inevitable
as the profiteers proclaim;
entrepreneurial scum,
if we all paid for our own stains on this earth,
if the only way to take from the planet and each other
was to do so with our own hands,
would you
care for anyone’s tears when you picked their pockets
would you
breathe in cave-poisoned air to hunt gold
would you
cut the fish and trees yourself
to let them bleed out in your drinking water
would you
season your meal with the money you gave everything for
would you
wake up
in the acid rain
in the blast zone you sowed your future in
and wonder
if there’d been better crops to grow?
Would you
wake up and see?
Or would this reveal your nature,
rotting with a selfish lack of heed
toward earth’s fellow creatures?
Open your eyes, and look:
do you know
who pays this price?
You do.
We all
live or die by the hearbeat of this world,
no matter how our souls are starving.
***
find my book at this link
Jordyn Saelor 