Journey to Oblivion

Think of me as you will. 
Have I become a thought I've had?
                                 A pulse, a spark,
a positive, a yes, an on, 
                        a true,
a single digit on a circuit's highway
travelling through dark?
                        I make my way.
Or not. Am carried
                  by a multitude
                                a crowd of those like me
across a field
and on towards my destination
                             with little more awareness
                             or chance to choose my fate
than if it had been written in my genes.



I'm hustled into Diode Street
                             ablaze with lights just now
                             (and - as you know - one-way).
                             I feel the sudden loss of power
                             that Diode Street induces,
pause for a moment
                             close beside The Cathode Cinema.
                             The screen outside
is showing snippets of the film within.
Experimental. Must be. Very. Lambs
                                 gambol in a field of numbers,
the farmer's forking sentences into a cart.

Why does the pause go on? The throng
                                    is getting restless. Up ahead
capacitors are charging and discharging
                                    all of which takes time
                                    a lot of time 
                                    (for someone in a rush)
allows the traffic to be regulated.     
Eases down the rush
is the printed circuit board's equivalent
                                    of traffic lights.


Trains of square wave pulses ghost across the screen, distort
both texts and images -
                       if only we could disentangle them:


There is always a voltage drop across a diode where sheep graze
on open hillsides there resistance is measured in Ohms 
the pasture in the valleys is constructed differently to
the field effect transistors and the gate providing access
to the stream should be shorted to the source 
until the circuit is complete.



The last wave shatters and the sheep graze on
a neural network
                which fades to diagrams
                pin diagrams 
                extensive memory blocks
                (but not the sort we suffer from)
                then back to neural networks.
It's oscillating now, between the two.



Which is when I see myself
                          sparking between the two
                          mapped to the screen and travelling 
                          fitfully on both 
                          both at the same time -
a situation quite devoid of logic,
which is why, perhaps, the screen can't settle down.




Where sheep are grazing in the upper pastures 
or in the fusiform gyrus a neuron may fire only when 
a certain face appears and sheep graze in its known
receptive field or on the open hillsides. It is also known 
that some parts of the brain produce a pattern of electrical 
activity that corresponds to layouts of retinal images 
and the gate opens to imagery originating from the senses
The sheep have trampled and/or consumed the final paragraph. 
However, in the brain, memories are very likely represented 
by activation patterns among these neuron networks. 
Such representations are formed, retrieved and reach 
conscious awareness by means not completely understood.



We move at last
approaching now a landscape built of silicon.

Impure.
       Doped with phosphorus or boron
A semi-conducting wilderness in which
an empty city stands supreme.

It's guarded by a flight of logic gates
NAND
EiTHER/OR
and AND

I am admitted.
             Once inside,
it boasts a huge expanse of memory blocks
I circle them
repeatedly
the pin addresses do not match the one I have.
Could this be journey's end?