La Belle Dame Sans Matrix

in memoriam


Agent Smith is crouching down to Sylvia Plath. She is strapped
to a chair with black & red typewriter ribbons. Her hands

are free in her lap, but her mouth
is gagged. Sylvia's eyes stare defiance,

cold but on fire, as Smith begins,

for the 9th time, his interrogation. He loosens
the knot of his black tie, takes away his black shades, disconnects

the curly transparent worm whispering
in his ear. Now Smith's lower lip pouts as his words curl

slowly out from his mouth, to wriggle
in amongst the mass of cells that're Plath's brain:

'So, at last, the great Sylvia Plath. I have her gagged! Perhaps,
Miss Plath you’d like to type WHY there is still this incessant

stink in here with us. In my nostrils, Miss Plath, this . . . this
inescapable smell. Why? Is it sweat, the foul animal aroma

of Sex, Miss Plath? Or perhaps it is the stench of Death?
My colleagues think I'm wasting my time with you,

but I think you want to do the write thing.' Agent Smith slides
a table & typewriter across the room using his mind, and stops.




It just in front of Sylvia's fingers. The keys glisten. She begins
to reach, but there is a dragging-screech

as Smith's mind slides the table away
                                                                 one imperial American inch.

Dear Reader, now adjust your viewpoint through
many points in a single circumference around

Sylvia strapped & gagged but reaching fast
for her typewriter. See her high-speed

flinch for the keys slowed
in  an  ooze  of  time. Through  her  nose  Sylvia  breathes

in  and  the  ink-ridden  straps  across  her  chest  slowly   snap; hear
the  twang  of  each  breaking  fibre  as  she  grabs

for  her  alph a bet  &  sacred  vowels, her  fingers  hissing
as  air-molecules  slip  along  the  grooves  of  her  fingerprints.

And now the paper in the typewriter is reeling
at miles an hour, but you, Reader, can see,

milliseconds delayed to nearly a minute, as  her  fingers
punch  the  code: connect, connect  to  spread

her deadly pattern of black ink across a blank
rectangular section called A4. It infects, it breeds. Smith reads:


'You don’t do, Baddy, you Simulated Agent, you.
You're not even a you. But I’m an i, the i in Die.

You met Me in the meadow of a memory. My fat
gold heart slaps against my lungs pulling in men.

And there is a charge, a very large charge, to watch
a woman undress her bones until perfected: black

sweet mouthfuls of shadows, the blood of words.'


Sylvia has ripped out the gag and so begins
to take in one long lung-filling breath. The wOman

is inspired. Her purpose rushes, pumping through her.

Angel Smith's mouth is gaping black & wide, he is pale,
and on his brow there're drops of illuminated dew. He wails

vowels as now

Plath's black rain of letters splatters through his brain. Tears
are rolling like molten silver down Smith's cheeks. Just

for an instant, just before deletion, just as he's passing
through Plath's naked mouth, Agent Smith finally feels,

finely feels what it’s like to be real.