goddess

Nature is as frightening as machines. Nature gives life and takes life, and we don't understand nature as we think we can understand machines. A motif in several of Martin's poems is nature as mother and goddess. Like nature, mothers and goddesses are both terrifying and beautiful, furious and alluring.

The poem "Mother Earth" speaks of a goddess who can't be trusted. I easily recognise the childlike, uncomprehending, slightly plaintive disappointment expressed here: "The Goddess had told me so and I believed her". In this snake-shaped poem, the "I" is eaten by both machines and nature. She can twist and dance like an adder but there is no escape.

From inside I
    was being
     eaten by a
        man-made
       computer and
         from out I
          was being
        devoured by
        the woman
     who created
        me.

The deadlocked conflict between nature goddess and machines finds its resolution in the cyborg of the final lines of the poem: "the silicon serpent". These lines are connected to a new piece of text, that leads us back again to the central line of answers.

In another of the poems, the "I" who speaks examines the goddess as a mechanic diagnoses a motor or a gynaecologist a woman:

In my arms I held the CPU-Goddess of my unknown future. She was warm and electric against my skin. I put her down and examined her cunt. With screw-driver in hand, I opened the doors to her insides.

Such a thorough, clinical, rational examination is useless with goddesses. Here, it reveals nothing but an apple, "a bulging heart of immortality". The goddess can be subjected to testing, but she is always incomprehensible.