Acclimating to the Unicameral Mind
by Greg Beatty

Life, since I've been downloaded,
has been disconcerting.
It's all a matter of becoming
accustomed to the unicameral mind,
of course. I can't say
they didn't warn me.
They did. Everyone said,
"Oh, once you've lost your meat,
everything is different!" Always with that tilt of the sensors,
always with that lilt of the speakers.
"How?" I'd ask. They wouldn't say.
Perhaps they couldn't say, busy
as they were becoming
accustomed to the unicameral mind.
You see, in the bad old biological
days, I didn't realize how much
I counted on a multicellar mansion
in which to hide my shit.
Cognitive dissonance was mere
theory, until the wall tween lobes
was removed for efficiency's
sake and my contradictions stared
at one another, naked in the foyer.
All the subconscious drives
that used to fill the foundation
now scamper in bright lights,
just one damned thing
after my mother.
My nonverbal skills are fine;
bereft of hippocampus,
tossing a ball became
a decorative algorithm atop
my processors, but my ethics
are revealed as polygonal
uncertainties, my aesthetics
as blurred holograms of
prejudices, and my logic
couldn't run a pinball machine.
It's better, of course. But.
It does take some getting
used to. I mean,
my psyche's so bright
I gotta wear shades.