The Newest

I roll restlessly on carpet
In a house you’ve never seen
Scaling rungs of a ladder
Gray and splintering
But it’s the ladder you built
In photos, I lose my life
Sucked dry and seen only
In pixels, pasted and stamped.

I have goals and knowledge, tools
Like gloves and buckets
Gazing at plums and forgetting
How to pluck them
Fine motor skills that need tuning
No calculus required, but
I am rusting in disuse
A canopy destroyed by hurricane’s gale

Being pampered and powdered
Taught us lethargy
Our skills of discipline are
Wanting, on indefinite furlough
In this imitation Mecca
We sow energy and seeds
Our liberators, fuming at the decline
Retail and dollars and budding consumers
And I sit vacant

I need Colorado peaches, dripping
Down our chins and staining our smocks
Sticky fingers kneading shoulders
We’re hair and coffee and indecision
Canvassing the town and scouring
For what,
I am still gathering.
I erase all anger,
And I am curious
At the ease.

The Mystery of Technology

My pupils spin, marbled, appraising
Carefully both slumber and wakefulness

We compose our love in zeros and
Ones that glide soundless and timeless
Through the crowded stratosphere

I'm bundled alone, seeking attention
In all the wrong places

There are smoking glass
Jars in the dark and pigeons
Fluttering down the hallway

Excuse me, you must be mistaken
I saw him, traveling backwards

In time down the fiber-optic cable
I was temporarily willing to
Purge myself of material attachment

But being poorly adjusted and
Fruitful is far more graceful