Baudrillard’s fever dream did not take place.
Let’s get that out of the way.
We will miss you, Jean, as we always have.

He’s an old man
sleeps with water
sitting on the nightstand.

He only dreams when he’s parched
and he’s parched all the time so he dreams
the whole night through
yeah he dreams in the daytime too.

As a senior citizen
you’re already aware
of the threat robots pose.

Out here in the desert of the real
who among us hasn’t spent too long
trying to write a country song?

By that analogy, is water ‘real’—really real—
and the desert dried into unreality
since water maps us, is mapping us

and the real is the space between
adumbration and that other thing
and he thanks goodness for thirst, or its simulation.

I am, yet what I am none cares or knows
I am the simulacrum of myself
What am I doing here, among the watermelons?
I don’t know what I am
I am the self-consumer of my woes

He’s a—senior citizen—
and he knows—
the threat—robots pose.