Do You Know?

The human brain generates 20 watts of electricity.
Or so the AI Overview tells me unprompted
when I search how much a thought costs me,
how much energy each flex of my fingers
are required to press each of these keys.

Do you know how much energy
is wasted by the AI Overview being generated?
I ask. It hesitates. I find an answer
under the links to buy a novelty brain mug.
Oh, just 6 bottles of water to cool the servers
every ten seconds. And they promise to be eco-friendly.

Did you know almost all their water filters
are falsely advertising their efficiency?
Yeah, there is no reliable way to remove
all the shit to make it drinkable again. All
the bacteria, the chemicals, the forever
plastics dancing in your cells.

Dear search, how much energy does plastic consume
inside the body? The AI has no answer because
we have no answer. Like a game of snake
an ouroboros on an old Nokia. Those invincible
bricks, where did they go? Other than swallowed
up deep inside, of course. Bit by micro-bit.

Did you know the human brain with a thought
could light a small bulb? 40 Joules in 2 seconds.
AI Overview pick-pocketed that info for me
because it doesn’t actually think anything or know that
the human brain is so efficient in ways we don’t
even understand. Or maybe I’m too harsh.

After all, we still don’t know what an appendix does,
but we still carve it out when we need to.
We know we can live without it if removed
before it explodes on a random Tuesday.
Well, depending on if your shit boss doesn’t
hesitate to call the ambulance.

And did you know that on the stretcher to the ER
as you clutch your side and bile of bits and brick
scratch your throat, you might use your last moments
the 2 second spark of the brain electrified and dancing
to ask the question through sweat and pain:
“Do you know how much this will cost me?”

---

Carmen Barefield (she/her) is a poet and writer living in Salem, Massachusetts. She is a graduate fellow of The Watering Hole and a Roots. Wounds. Words. fellow. She was also longlisted for the 2025 Massachusetts Poetry Festival’s First Poem Contest. Some of her work can be found in The Elevation Review, Incessant Pipe, Molecule, Popshot Magazine, Kissing Dynamite, and others. You can find out more about her at carmenbarefield.com.