Once You’ve Lost Your Mind

What when old hosts aren’t good enough,
When the mind can only grow more,

Can only extend creation
In open binary oceans?

You worry each other whether
Bots will be smarter or crueler.

Bots will be hosts, ergonomic
Hosts built especially for mind,

But not, like you, built for living
And making more lives from living.

It’s not what you or bots can do.
What will mind do that won’t need you?

Surprise

It’s working. And it’s insane!

Gushed the thrilled astronomer

Of the latest telescope.

Sitting up in bed to watch

Another morning, you think

About Earth spinning, smoothly,

Without the smallest stumble,

Always another morning.

It’s working, and it’s insane.

Offer Void in Hospitals, Prisons, and Trenches

What’s been disappointing you?
Usually the feedback
You imagined receiving

From other human beings,
And frequently the results
Of your plans to get things done.

What’s never disappointing?
Deliberate, excessive
Boredom. Boredom always works.

If you have the privilege,
Assign yourself a full hour
Without any distractions.

Don’t be mindful. Just be bored.
You won’t be disappointed.

Meaningless Information

We’re here to claim it’s not an oxymoron.
The information propagating itself
As life is meaningful if you find it is,

But not because it’s information and not
Because it replicates. Meaning’s something strange,
Stranger than replicating information.

Meaning’s why massive data can lead nowhere,
Why you cry that you’re not a mere statistic.
Meaning is nothing, nothing much, everything.

A trickier question is whether meaning
Even need involve any information.
We’ll say no. We’ll say new meanings can be found

In old information. From whence came meaning
If there wasn’t any new information?
Don’t you see? The distinction is meaningless.

Who Put the Cat in the Bag?

An excess of wisdom leads
Straight to the side of the road.
The palaces are always

Casinos, whether they know
It or not. It is not fate
That needs to claim that it’s fate.

Something’s always someone’s fault,
But nothing much cares except
The beasts who invented blame.

Old Dozer’s Lament

Yesterday, the hermit napped in the sun.
Tonight, he’s snoring in bed. When will this

Old hermit ever be done with sleeping
So much, with dreaming before he is dead?

The Eyes Go Out in a Storm

The vampire devices
Left attached to the walls
Glow with arachnid eyes

All night through this dark house
In these unlighted woods
On a steep mountain slope.

Electricity is
Arriving constantly,
So long as it gets paid.

You pay for it. You pay
With fairy numbers but
Also with vampire nights.