Remember omnipresent rain,
The rain like static, white noise drowning out
The evenmorning’s sober pain,
The pain that knows us, what we’re all about.
We sing our fathers’ neon blues,
Of blues and reds, the nightlights of the street.
We drift along in dreamlike hues,
The hues that burn the stars who can’t compete.
Remember the favela rats,
The rats who scrap in post-industrial sprawl,
The casualties of econ-stats,
The stats that cheer the corporate free-for-all.
In cities kanji score the signs,
The signs of nations swinging with the East.
But we can read between the lines,
The lines of folks the multinats have fleeced.
Remember the subhuman race,
The race of evolution in the flesh.
We lose our minds in cyberspace,
The space where memories and mainframes mesh.
We crave our augmentation fix,
To fix the meat with chrome robotic parts.
Throw neural implants in the mix
And mix machines with fragile human hearts.
Remember corporate shadow wars,
The wars of espionage and freedom-fights,
Where console cowboys break down doors,
The doors of ICE that guard the priceless bytes.
But it’s the samurai who rules,
The rules of razorgirls and rentacops
Who break their bodies into tools,
The tools conducting black and darker ops.
Do not forget your leather threads,
The threads of frowning zeitgeist that we wear.
Do not forget your off-brand meds,
The meds that paint fluorescent streaks in air.
Do not forget your mirrorshades,
The shades that hide our bright and blackened eyes.
Do not forget your weapon-grades,
The grades we earn to knock you down to size.
Do not forget your cyberdeck,
To deck the Man and broken bathroom stalls.
Do not forget low-life, high-tech,
The tech that makes and breaks our prison walls.
Do not forget your steel will,
The will to write the world and all its wrongs.
Tomorrow’s requiems we spill,
And spill our guts in old electric songs.