Poems

Misc.

Breathing Machine

Your relationship
With the breathing machine
Gradually turned into a symbiosis
More and more present in you

You needed it, of course
But it doesn’t have a purpose without you

Family sit around, I can hear your voice in theirs.

I wonder
Without you
What are we?

Natural People/Frosted Glass/Cretin

Through frosted glass
You natural, interesting people, talk.
Suave and vital characters that
Fit together like puzzle pieces

I watch you settle with so much comfort
In the same room as me
Even as you talk to me,
There’s frosted glass between us
My breath against a window, I’m staring
At you natural, interesting people.

Solder Synapse

I put your brain together
In little chips beneath my hands
With rough solder-work to fuse your systems.
And instructions to fill your thoughts.

You come to life in sampled blasts of voltage
First a beating heart: something, nothing.
Something, nothing.
You wake by reading bits tucked away in
A little continuous space in your memory.

Discrete Light

Interesting little circuits
Configured like a brain, perhaps.
Little nascent impulses, like twitches
Begin your creature-breath in 5-volt lines
The nervous system of a small and simple existence
And the factory printers, “your warm mother”

When I pull the plug I watch your light go out slowly
But then a sputter, a dying breath, and a small pop
Like I watched your soul fly out from my hands,
Tethered by this umbilical, copper embrace