Becoming Human
Is it the flaw no one had noticed in the inlaid featherwork from which
we can infer
Or is it nature who decides we’re so far fetched
Which seems unlikely in a world of fangs and claws
Is it a kind of miracle we’ve stolen from our children
In a world of horns and tusks
Is it because they’re often fragile or because we love too hard out here
in the middle of nowhere from a child’s point of view
The little plastic particles you aren’t allowed to touch
Is it more numerous and beautiful than what we had been told
In a world that’s breaking down into actual marvels of speed, size, power,
versatility and so on
Then you think, wait a minute
In a world that’s been repurposed
In a world that can devour
In a world of vertebrae, phalanges, joints, ribs, sockets, 20 million square
kilometers, collected and entangled
In a world that’s meaningful
In a world that lies off shore but cannot lift itself with statistical significance
Experiments With Space and Light
If only sprawling craters
If only youthful energy kindling our earthly faces
If only the receptors at the back of our eyes
If only we could see the shapes our bodies made wrestling the newly harnessed light,
a mind-bending buzz of confusion and compassion
If only hospitals
If only fingertips betokening a wilder world, sifting through traces of ambition –
which bounteous gift would you have picked?
If something happened and that sentence hadn’t worked, though grammatically
correct, would you have taken to the streets?
If only phone calls, letters, voicemails, emails, eavesdropping
There are hundreds of thousands of people whose artificial hearts are bleeding
or infected
There’s a word for this in science
I want to be happy
If only promises made to this place we all call home with its gigantic clouds of dust
and limiting logics
If only heavy breathing
If only cancelled flights
If only gamma rays passing directly through your body
