Systems crash and reboot all the time, just
like mine. I’ve been grazed and groped by eldritch

horrors, plague gods, who bring decay and lust
to the same putrid climax. A love witch

once taught me cures for those sores, but I crashed
for a week, dreaming of crackle and glitch.

After a reboot I’m dazed and abashed;
bodies freshly derelict tend to twitch

and fray while in public. Cosmic heartache
appears in rust around the edges, while

the gods, too stoned to care, watch us corrode,
laughing. What good is backbone with backache?

Off-line soul leaves flesh. Off-line I’m jut vile
numbers. Some queer hateful cipher. Hell code.