Mother Glass

Glorious achievement
In tempered silicon,
Mass-produced, belated

Eye of television,
Cut on parallel lines,
Backed by the best spyware,

Installed in living rooms,
Kitchens, bedrooms, bathrooms,
Offices, and barrooms.

People invented you.
People named you, mother.
People watch you through you.

People watch each other,
And they say this is worse,
Or they say it’s better,

But people are smarter
Than people know and loathe
To forgive each other.

Stela of the Vultures

Ningirsu hoists the naked
And the dead high in his net,
A city-king’s fantasy

Of divine-sanctioned, blood-soaked,
Genocidal victory,
Forty-four centuries gone.

Care to give us an update?
Gods are still being invoked
Everywhere the ground’s blood-soaked.

Leaders loom larger than life,
Greater than their little flesh,
Still in all their fantasies,

And the people believe them,
Or switch their hopes among them,
Still scavengers, all of them.

Bare Similarity

Nothing conveys a raw day
Like leafless twigs juddering
As if shivering in wind.

Nothing touches a raw nerve
Like suggesting you were born
To stupidity and shame.

Nothing soothes a worn raw mind
Like a world without people
Sprawled quietly in the sun.

Nothing’s ever raw nothing,
However, just the framed set
Where raw nothing’s imagined.

Blossoming Aion

The sapient sap’s
A sucker for that,
A name that means life,

And elan vital,
And one century,
And an age, and an

Eternity, but
Has its history,
Same as any word,

And has been changing,
And attracts meaning,
As floral aion

Attracts the pollen
Predator who brings
Meaning’s dust on wings.

Union Closed

Numerical endogamy—
Combine any pair and you get
A set already a member
Of the existing family.

Consider combinatorics,
Which is just counting elements.
A little surprise, a little
Information. Lots of surprise,

A lot. Now where are you going?
Search through elements one by one.
How much can you learn from each one?
Surprise, surprise. That’s quite a lot.

There’s a proof now. Works to a point.
No number’s ever a fair coin.

And Now to Yield

Observing from the margins
Of digital paradise,
The deceitful wanderer

Isn’t fooling anyone,
Isn’t even attempting
To sail off stranded island.

It’s a matter of watching
The weather, gods and titans
On the horizons rumbling

And thinking, at the same time,
Better not to linger here
But why bother to escape.

A good escape needs to know
How to get out and, roughly,
Where to go, even if not

How exactly to get there.
Just bolt, and you’ll be dragged back,
Each time weaker than before.

It’s not an awful spirit,
This age that possesses you,
Keeps you in captivity,

In thrall, no worse than any
Other spirit of an age.
There’s magic in the margins,

And the sun is on the cliffs,
A quiet light through the room.
Better to drift than resist.

Orthogonal to the World

Wake up when you’re done with sleeping.
Get up when uprightness feels right.

All hours are unreal anyway,
And all days are equally real,

And real and unreal are just terms
You hurl at an unyielding world.

It’s your humans you depend on,
And humans you defend against,

And humans who invented hours,
And humans who made rules for them,

And you’re human, and you need them,
And you have a horror of them,

And your dreams are all about them,
And your waking life’s still dreaming

You’re human in your human world,
But let’s pretend we’re alien,

Waking since we’re done with sleeping,
Rising since uprising feels right.