Do you remember the machine the way I do?
How it drives towards the horizon
beyond the vanishing point that I can't even make out
The machine that struggles to quench its thirst with sips from a
smoldering sun,
a copper pendant that dangles between its breast.
Wire weave spider webs over the open mouths of pipes
that run and dive around landscapes
clouded by plumes of gray smoke that threaten to sew shut our
eyes,
that stretch for miles and miles of titanium highway.
When he descends on us,
all the parts of the machine,
we do not move.
Not a single red bulb lights.
There is no siren's song
to distract him from this job at hand.
Everywhere
there is a sound
of screws that shake in their bolts,
the low whir of belts that caress the wheel,
valves that warm hands over spark plug crackles.
He traces his fingertips over our iron flesh,
run them in and out of spokes.
There is no Love in his smile like the way
I've seen chain tenderly spoon gear.
There is no hatred in his Eyes
like the dull pummel of piston's fist against cylinder.
I have watched him forever
as he sails his very small boat astern of mine
not because I am the best sailor,
but because I don't know how to describe the wind.
I am no thief in clever disguise,
just another component with no capacity for uprise.
He laughs at me,
and begins
to strip me of my plastic coating,
peels back my skin
so nicely
that I can see the reflection of muscle and sinew across his pupil,
methodically works his way over my body
and listens to every chunk of flesh
slap against the ground.
There is no pain
when he splits my face down the middle
and cracks open my cheek.
He leaves me naked,
unnamed,
a well-oiled machine,
just the inner systems of a body
happy to be rid of her plastic coating,
and hands me this memory perdu to nestle somewhere between
unconscious creation and deja vu.
Then he ask me something I've heard before.
"Which one?"
he says.
"Choose."
And he points out
lion's roar, rainbow trout, cicada,
farmer's crop, hot wind, mouthful of cold water.
But there's something in his voice
that I seem to understand from before
that in choice there is chance,
and though he says
no one has ever succeeded
I take my chances,
and choose
human.
