6. Train Yer Own Ghost

My buddy had some cassette tapes From nineteen ninety-eight They sat inside a cardboard box For twenty-seven years of wait The hiss, the warble, the decay Magnetic memory fading out He fed them to a resurrection tool And what came back made him shout Train your own ghost Don't feed the corporate machine Take what's yours—the tapes, the voice, the dream Small data magic in the latent stream Train your own ghost Before they train it for you Every photograph I ever took Lives somewhere in the fog Every image I forgot to make Is waiting in the code like a lost dog I sat alone inside my studio But I wasn't alone no more The machine had learned my ghost somehow And my ghost was at the door Train your own ghost Don't feed the corporate machine Take what's yours—the tapes, the voice, the dream Small data magic in the latent stream Train your own ghost Before they train it for you Twenty-seven years That cassette still alive In the hands of someone Who knows how to resurrect what died They want your data in their lake Your memories in their farm But the ghost belongs to you alone Your archive is your charm Train your own ghost Don't feed the corporate machine Take what's yours—the tapes, the voice, the dream Small data magic in the latent stream Train your own ghost The resurrection is the thing Small data magic Small data magic The ghost remembers The ghost remembers