{"id":92552,"date":"2017-05-22T12:01:14","date_gmt":"2017-05-22T11:01:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=92552"},"modified":"2018-12-20T09:49:23","modified_gmt":"2018-12-20T09:49:23","slug":"me-and-my-shadow-drone","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2017\/05\/me-and-my-shadow-drone\/","title":{"rendered":"\u201cMe and My Shadow-Drone\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Me and my Shadow-Drone<br \/>\nwent \u201cwalking\u201d down the lane.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIf you wouldn\u2019t mind,\u201d<br \/>\nI told the Drone,<br \/>\n\u201cI\u2019d really like to be alone\u2026.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cComputing\u2026,\u201d said the Drone\u2014<br \/>\nmaking some computer noise&#8211;<br \/>\n\u201cYou are unhappy with our present arrangement?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>(There was just enough of the slippery-slope<br \/>\nin the Drone\u2019s toneless tone<br \/>\nto stop me in my tracks.)<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI was kidding,\u201d I explained.<br \/>\n\u201cI like being followed wherever I go.<br \/>\nYour biometric tabs on me<br \/>\ngrant me the freedom to be free!<br \/>\nI need not worry<br \/>\nif I lose my way\u2026.<br \/>\nThere\u2019s always a link<br \/>\non my smart-phone;<br \/>\nor, I\u2019ll twitter my way<br \/>\nout of the way&#8211;<br \/>\nunder your supervision\u2014of course\u2026.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThere\u2019s nothing quite accountable,\u201d<br \/>\nintoned the Drone,<br \/>\n\u201cto account for your distress.<br \/>\nYou\u2019ve paid your taxes, paid your dues.<br \/>\nOf course\u2026.\u201d (an ominous pause here&#8211;)<br \/>\n\u201cThere is that one \u2018anonymous\u2019 post<br \/>\nyou thought you made<br \/>\na few years back\u2026.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cBut that was\u2014that was\u2026supposed to be!\u2014<br \/>\n<em>anonymous!<\/em><br \/>\nBefore the \u2018Total State Solution.\u2019<br \/>\nBefore the \u2018Great Necessity.\u2019<br \/>\n\u2018We the People\u2019 were assured\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201c`We the People\u2019 is a silly meme,\u201d<br \/>\nthe Drone intoned.<br \/>\n\u201cWho were those \u2018People\u2019<br \/>\nthat you whine about?<br \/>\nDid you ever meet among the lot<br \/>\na black man, woman, poor or middle-class<br \/>\nworker, thinker, idealist?<br \/>\nWhere were the \u2018Indians\u2019<br \/>\n(whom Jefferson called \u2018savages\u2019)?<br \/>\nWeren\u2019t they \u2018the people,\u2019 too?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The computer whined<br \/>\na kind of laugh\u2026.<br \/>\n\u201cYou\u2019re on a biometric leash!<br \/>\nWe know your thoughts before you strew them<br \/>\nhaphazardly about.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThen you know I\u2019m thinking:<br \/>\nYou could kill me\u2014just like that!\u201d<br \/>\n(I snapped my fingers here.)<\/p>\n<p>\u201cQuicker than that!\u201d the Drone intoned.<br \/>\n(And it made a dumb, annoyng sound,<br \/>\ncircling overhead.)<\/p>\n<p>And I awakened!<br \/>\nI saw that everything<br \/>\nin the World of Now<br \/>\nwas nothing but a hologram<br \/>\nand only the shadows had weight.<\/p>\n<p>And I wept, remembering:<\/p>\n<p>Once, too long ago,<br \/>\nwhen I was four or five,<br \/>\nmy father hoisted me<br \/>\non his strong shoulders<br \/>\nand handed me an ice-cream cone<br \/>\nand I was ten feet tall.<br \/>\n_____________________________________________<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/12\/gary-corseri.png\" ><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-thumbnail wp-image-84067\" src=\"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/12\/gary-corseri-150x150.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"150\" height=\"150\" \/><\/a><em>Dr. Gary Steven Corseri is a m<\/em><em>ember of the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/\" >TRANSCEND Network for Peace, Development and Environment.<\/a> He has published and posted articles, fiction and poems at hundreds of venues, including,<\/em> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/search\/?q=gary+corseri\" >TMS (Transcend Media Service<\/a><a href=\"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/\" >)<\/a>, The New York Times, Village Voice, Redbook Magazine <em>and<\/em> Counterpunch.\u00a0 <em>He has published 2 novels and 2 collections of poetry, and his dramas have been produced on<\/em> PBS-Atlanta <em>and elsewhere.\u00a0 He has performed his poems at the Carter Presidential Library and Museum and has taught in universities in the US and Japan, and in US public schools and prisons.\u00a0 Contact: <a href=\"mailto:Gary_Corseri@comcast.net\">Gary_Corseri@comcast.net<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Me and my Shadow-Drone<br \/>\nwent \u201cwalking\u201d down the lane.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[182],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-92552","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-poetry-format"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92552","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=92552"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92552\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=92552"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=92552"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=92552"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}