(Nimue)
This poem was written specifically for a recent online open mic that had the theme 'online'. The event was also a launch for Laura Jane Round's website. Laura is a talented poet and a compelling author. She's someone I met through steampunk events and we're both involved with Tenebrous Texts. You can find her website over here - https://laurajaneround.co.uk/
Consider the machine
I got online back in the nineties
There I first heard about luddites and read
About breaking the frames.
Online where I learned to crotchet
Found seed savers, water witches
Basic reskilling.
The things we didn't learn to do
With our hands, salvaged
In youtube videos.
Go online to find how to be
Radical, rewilding, regenerative
Using the machine to defy the machine.
Show me your yurt, your compost heap
Your unmown lawn, your upcycled lamp
Photograph the revolution.
The irony isn't lost on me
Instagram influencers
Making memes about living simply.
I think about what might have been
If the machine breakers had won
Not the end of machinery, surely.
But perhaps a revolution that did not
Make machines of impoverished humans
Stealing life, hope and joy.
Imagine if we had built to truly serve
The greatest good for all. Not exploiting
Cheap labour in mass producing factories.
Break the machine that steals from you
Demand a device that serves life
That would be a real industrial revolution
We're not loom weavers to throw tools
Into the machine yet we might still
Put spanners in the mechanisms of oppression
Pick your frame
Smash what you can
Of the systems that crush us.
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