As I Wander Lonely in the Cloud
Smart machines armed with proprietary algorithms remain attentive to my wishes. They use a little known, mysterious mental faculty to anticipate my urges. Ingenious applications of intelligence solve the problem of desire. By now, their ability seems less arcane, considering how my aspirations may be formulated to coincide with goods and services of advertisers and providers whose product lines cohabit in the cloud with the history of all my searches as I browse, added to the sum of my mediated sociality. The cloud’s vast, expanding, and indefinite memory stores all the information I create in my interlinked communications, including what I’m writing to you now, as on my couch I multitask in pensive mood, opening my mail to find a discount coupon reminding me that nothing says spring like daffodils.
Breaking News
It’s true, your bitter vision idolizes death. Crouched below zero, in a subterranean cave of frozen midnight, your broken old bones go on chattering. Saline crystals fall into your mouth that forgot the taste of laughter. You cultivate a pitiless void—knowing that, unlike stones, newspapers please no one. Did your righteous skeleton commence with a jawbone of contention? Must you bask in petty hatred and complacent ruin, hoarding implacable certainties, miniatures and rockpiles, breaking news of nobodies? Would you incinerate the earth to warm your wintry heart?
The Gap
When everyone is equal then each is lost in the crowd. My clothes, my car, my credit score allow me to stand out, yet conform. The rough inequalities we all acknowledge, a widening gap that threatens demise. The gap is the future where I point my gun. What remains an influential treatise on democracy began with a tour of the penal system in a country led by a long line of horse breakers and tiger killers.
Returning
A silk moth ascends on your exhaled sigh. Your lungs sustain a sapling that yearns to grow ancient. Your blood seeps into groundwater, emerging in a rusty spring. Your teeth and bones, precious minerals, gleam in silver moonlight. Your skin turns different colors, no longer trying to contain your essence. Giving of itself, your flesh releases fluids, nourishes insects, lubricates the earth. Fire, as it drowns, sputters your name, not sure if it is curse or prayer.
Found Poem (thanks to Wade Major)
America: The Motion Picture “. . . a hot bucket of vomit.”
Photo by Irene Fertik