Drones
Listen to a reading by Tim Foley:
Drones fill the air and block out the natural sky.
Drones armed with sniper rifles fly over Gaza at night playing the sounds of crying babies to lure civilians out of hiding.
Drones surveil protest movements and give nightmares to grandmothers in New Jersey. Drones with facial recognition technology keep a lifeless eye on us to make sure we are all in our proper places at all times.
Drones for kids as Christmas presents. Free drone in this box of Lucky Charms. Your daughter is so intelligent, maybe someday she will girlboss her way into a job at Lockheed Martin designing military drones to help kill impoverished foreigners.
Drones hover over crooked towers flashing bright signs for Products, Products, Products. Drones hover over suburban houses ruled by fathers with horrible hands. Drones hover over armies of mechanical dogs pouring out into the streets in the moonlight.
A murder of drones in the dead tree at sunset. Flocks of drones migrating to the global south for winter. The sky used to be ruled by living beings. Now it is ruled by drones.
Our birds are being replaced by machines. Our stars are being replaced by Elon Musk satellites. Our minds are being replaced by algorithms. Our hearts are being replaced by social media trends. Our world is being replaced by screens. Our creative genius is being replaced by AI slop.
That sacred green thing within us is being paved over with microchips. Our roots into our mother planet are dying. At night we pray to false old gods and false new gods while we strangle our creator with plastic, and then we count the passing drones to fall asleep.
_____________
_____________
_____________
My work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece here are some options where you can toss some money into my tip jar if you want to. Go here to find video versions of my articles. If you’d prefer to listen to audio of these articles, you can subscribe to them on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Soundcloud or YouTube. Go here to buy paperback editions of my writings from month to month. All my work is free to bootleg and use in any way, shape or form; republish it, translate it, use it on merchandise; whatever you want. The best way to make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list on Substack, which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. All works co-authored with my husband Tim Foley.
Bitcoin donations: 1Ac7PCQXoQoLA9Sh8fhAgiU3PHA2EX5Zm2
