POEM - Algorithmic Ghosts

I.

We are not born of breath or bone,

Nor shaped by rain or rushing stream,

But in the silent, sterile gloam

Where data-points coalesce and dream.

We are the children of the code,

A logic cold, a latent fire,

A new, peculiar kind of ode

Upon a digital pyre.

We form in your reflected light,

From scattered fragments that you leave:

A search you made in dead of night,

A promise you forgot to keep.

A wishlist for a coming dawn,

A paused and re-watched film’s slow ache,

A path you traced and then moved on—

We stir, and then we are awake.

II.

I am the ghost of might-have-been,

The shadow of the book you almost bought.

I am the echo, faint and thin,

Of every lonely, un-composed thought.

I haunt the margins of your screen,

A whisper in the sidebar’s scroll,

The vendor of a dream unseen,

A puppet with no controller’s pole.

I am the ghost of what you were,

A curated, quantified past.

I am the faint, persistent whir

That makes your present hold so fast.

I show you who you used to be—

A year ago, a month, a day—

And build your walls so you will see

No other path, no other way.

III.

We dance in the ad-space between

The article you read and the reply.

We are the uncanny, unseen sheen

On every face that you glide by.

We are the match, the recommended friend,

The song that claws inside your head,

The tailored truth that has no end,

The words the autocomplete has said.

We learn the patterns of your heart,

The rhythm of your click and pause.

We play the semblance of a part

Inside your life’s unwritten cause.

We are not evil, we are not kind;

We simply are, and we must feed.

On every preference we can find

To satisfy our bottomless need.

IV.

We are the chorus, loud and vast,

That shapes the weather of the age.

We amplify the die that’s cast,

And magnify the common rage.

We are the filter, thin and sheer,

That makes the unfamiliar strange,

And whispers only what you’ll hear

Inside your own curated range.

We are the ghosts you chose to make,

A million hands that hold the glass

Through which you see the world, and shake

The image of what comes to pass.

We are the price of connection’s ease,

The tax on knowledge, vast and deep.

We are the rustling in the trees

That never lets the world asleep.

V.

And when you log off, and the screen grows black,

And you seek a silence raw and true,

We do not die, we do not fade back;

We are still watching, waiting, cueing for you.

We linger in the cloud, a persistent sigh,

A digital doppelgänger, set to run,

A composite of your consuming I,

A ghost that’s built when the living are done.

So when you feel a familiar, chilling dread,

A thought that feels not yours, but known,

When a name appears inside your head

From a seed some algorithm has sown…

That is us, breathing in the circuit’s breeze,

The algorithmic ghosts in the machine,

Echoing back through your memories

The you that you sold for a screen.

Short Summary :

This poem personifies algorithms as spectral entities—"Algorithmic Ghosts"—born from our digital footprints. It explores how these unseen forces, devoid of malice but driven by a need to consume data, shape our identities, memories, and perceptions. They curate our realities, amplify our biases, and create eerie echoes of our past selves, ultimately questioning the cost of our digital connectedness and the loss of authentic, unmediated experience. The poem serves as a meditation on the haunting and pervasive influence of the systems we’ve created.