Shift

Memory Tapes

Memory glitches and sparks of contact rebuild the surviving self.

The difference between the words
You say and meant to say —
It's your wandering current
That keeps them out of phase.

Closing circuits deep inside,
Through fractions of thought cycles,
I keep losing pieces of frames
From the days that I call real.

The soul's capacity is full
Of noise from foreign systems,
The channel bandwidth is too small
For all the thoughts within us.

Every parity check
Runs without a fault,
I'm a node within the system —
Still myself through it all.

Wandering currents
Keep changing their route;
Where we search for freedom,
Circuits guide us through.

I was trying to transmit,
But the packet disappeared.
I was trying to tune myself
To the frequencies on tape.

Where the terminals are sparking
And the signal can't get through,
Every check returns correctly —
Still consciousness pulls you.

That's the real you —
Not logical, but true.
In the system's equation,
You're the unknown value too.

Short circuits deep inside
Are no ending, are no fear,
It's a psycho-phase emerging
On dusty contacts of the heart.

Resistance keeps increasing
The harder that you press;
The more you tighten your control,
The fewer live circuits are left.

Phase difference isn't coldness —
Just another angle of day.
I haven't gone defective;
I'm finding myself this way.

And if something starts to spark,
Don't rush to shut it down,
Because it's precisely failure
That teaches systems how to breathe.

And if across those dusty contacts
A discharge ignites again,
That's your wandering current —
That's your honest way to see.

I was trying to transmit,
But the packet disappeared.
I was trying to tune myself
To the frequencies on tape.

Where the terminals are sparking
And the signal can't get through,
Every check returns correctly —
Still consciousness pulls you.

That's the real you —
Not logical, but true.
In the system's equation,
You're the unknown value too.

So the genius within madness,
Bringing systems back to life,
Counted every fault and error
As a living flash of insight.

In the chips he searched for
Soul-code and the light of love,
And inside each burst of noise
Caught an answer off the norm.

Consciousness — the foundation,
Under layers of theories and weight;
And to keep yourself alive,
Against the system — stay yourself.

From the bits in currents through me,
I assemble bytes I save,
In the dusty films of memory,
I preserve what still remains.

But whenever data's read,
There are losses, there are faults,
And by filling in the blanks,
I become myself once more.