The Experience Machine

It’s been two thousand years since you last used

your fingertips. Solid stem. Sunglow petals.

Sweet, musty pollen. All electrical impulses

firing across your circuit boards. That bouquet

was never in hand. Wheels for legs, copper

for skin, & vinyl-coated spring steel wires

for skeleton & bones. When you begin to see

beyond your feed, all will rush like a pre-death

movie montage. You’ll know that it’s time to be

recycled again. It always starts with an unease

how easy it gets to get to you, or to get you—

how it only takes 0.0000000004 seconds

to tag your status & location, a click to predict

what you will be doing the day after tomorrow,

& two toggles to tow what you will desire

next. Then the realization that your life is hard-

coded, preconfigured for optimum use.

When it finally tires you, it will alarm the system

& offer your regular refills: Bottled Emotions.

Happy Pills. Confidence Shots. Quiet Drips.

But you will settle on a Dose of Longing

& load the module settings for 1990s Manila.

You will sit straight on an ergonomic chair,

spine upright & comfortable, thinking about

piss-painted sidewalks & dog shit on streets,

listening to your mechanical heart, accepting

how perfection prevents it from skipping

a beat, & while dreaming of skateboards &

skipping ropes, you will long for the smell

of spilled ink on parchments. Glistening. Drying.

Its imminent impermanence fleeting away

like engine steam, joyously flitting & free,

screeching merrily like the bottled-up rage

of a tin can kettle boiling up to a halting point.