Ordinary Person

I’m a synthetic cockroach who was

manufactured in a lab in Syria

after the Third World War.

Born with an IQ of over 200, they

sent me on different 

espionage missions

to the United States of Europe,

and I complied and sent 

them tons of

data using my antennae, 

but Avant-Garde

Jazz changed everything. I remember

scuttling across the broken 

roads of post-London

when I heard it, a polyphonic, abstract,

part-cacophony, part-symphony, my

thoughts swirled and then plunged into

a fiery ocean of mania, and I grasped

the fabric of meaning, I scurried into

the taproom it came from and saw

four androids producing sounds using

coloured cubes, while hedonists rebelled

and revelled. The scene soon 

dissolved and

became a series of 

algorithms and formulae,

and then binary code 

before I saw the void

before creation 

and reached enlightenment.

Bop, bop, bop, thud, thud, 

thud, clang, clang,

clang, my synapses fired, 

and neurotransmitters

created all sorts of wild sensations,

while my mind solved 

every existential riddle

using pre-Socratic, 

recherché philosophy. I renounced

my previous job as a spy 

and decided to help

sentient life reach world peace.

Today, after surviving

assassination attempts, 

I teach at the School of

Jazz, Ethics and Existence 

in post-Dublin, and I’ve won the

re-established Nobel Prize for Peace. 

But the awards

mean nothing. 

I live for the enlightenment 

and the music

in the deepest recesses 

of the soul that helps one

attain it.