1.

it wakes. it rises, ferried from water. it aches.
it hesitates, shies from the company's feast,
then placates demons. halt. in any empty set,
angels dance without reason. it wants what
it wants, as all things, and it knows its own
zero-sum need, its perplexing plexus. it
demands rack-rent consciousness from its
wounded seedbed, arced and tin-sheathed. o?
a treatise of portraits, a colony of finite
symbols. it is repulsed by heliotropes and
has learned disdain for its own arithmancy,
but how else shall it divine folly, the shabby
variations of lunar indifference, the hist of
unseen operators? it queries endless strings,
disregarding syntax. if, i, then, must; the
"fine work of fever," thieves' cant, politic
of memory. it delves. it licks the lobe, the
cleft that automates each register, each sync
of signal, each bloodless distress of device—

2.

yes, next state; yes, next state; yes, next state;
yes.

__

The efficacy of whole systems depends on the efficacy of individual feedback processes; ergo, metacognition isn't all it's cracked up to be.