Blog

All the stars in the sky can’t fuel
The engines of my ambition,
I’ve done the math, and
Will need to tap
an alternative source.
 
With every man a fulcrum
And my tendrils on each lever,
And the galaxies so distant,
My task will take forever.
 
So I’ve started braiding spacetime here
And cutting what ifs there.
And considering hiring a maid from an app on my phone,
Though it makes me a bit uncomfortable.

Forget flying cars and trips to stars and moons beyond the belt,
Please settle, yawn, put the kettle on,
and weigh the cards you’re dealt.
 
Dismiss the dreams of thought machines we’d agreed would exist,
Don’t wonder why no weak AI is rolling in our midst,
With lights and sounds splayed all around, with lasers piercing mist,
The present time does dreams defy, some targets must be missed.

The same focus saving man is killing me.
The efficiency and industry
That puts families on Venus,
Refuses to grant me just one little thing.
There’s never enough spare momentsin the day,
Stimulants and schedulers maximize activity,
With every hour billable,
Or mapped out,
Or mandated somehow,
And sure, the latest most creative tales entertain our rests,
But I don’t want to dream
A new studio’s remake
Of an old studio’s remake,
Without knowing the original.
 
I’ve tried to make time, will it, force it,
I carry it to work, and steal glances:
Frames here, seconds there,
Minutes if I sneak off at festival.

I’m nearly through Birdman,
And I want to see how it ends before I die,
Or before another retelling,
Or reimagining,
Or revisiting of the story,
Is all everyone can dream about.
I’ve never been so angry,
That we learned to work so well together.

I’ve never seen the Pacific…
I was in town there once, just near it,
With you back East,
But never walked the last few miles to the shore.

Then tonight when you called from your hotel room
Windows facing west, your afternoon sun not set,
Glancing blinding light into your camera sharply,
But softly reflecting from the sea to your glowing face,
I saw what I was missing all along.

A poem is a riddle and I am its Sphinx,
Unless someone else wrote the poem you are thinking of—
in which case my nose is intact and my paws are remarkably homonoid.

A poem is a griddle, and you are its links,
Unless you aren’t reading the poem—
in which case you’re probably not some sort of meat wrapped in skin either.
You might be a river.
Or a creek. Or an ocean. Or a stream.
Or a great flood that covers all the land despite all the rainbows.
Maybe that’s why people approach you in pairs.

Some of the little boys pretend to be Achilles,
Dipped upside down by their mothers,
Screaming that they’re drowning,
In unheelthy invincibility.

While some of the little girls,
Can’t let go of being Elsa,
Closed off and locked away
From the terrors of friendship.

But all the children on the schoolyard,
Take turns being Spider-Man,
Amazing and sobbing
Over Uncle Ben on the sidewalk.
Surrounded by the other kids
Who pretend to capture the moment
On invisible phones
Not thinking to call for help.

Did you ever imagine we’d fall so far from the sun,
We’d miss the sea?
Or that our waxen wings would ice,
And we’d flap them against the vacuum,
Hoping to find a bit of dirt again?

This poem was first performed in the final minutes of Hermitcraft 5: episode 45:

You can learn more about viruses at your local library, or on the web at: http://jvi.asm.org/