an alternating impulse

If another android
calls you a robot
does it hurt you more,
or is it less?

Breath

Somedays it is hard.

But always it is like breathing
Like a heartbeat
Effortless. Needed. An inevitability
Of life. Of physics
Constant gravity. Tides pulled
By lunar astronomy

An ever presence that is so
Natural to being that
On the good days we forget
But for deep inhaling
Of casual joy. Of knowing.

On bad days, though, we suck in
Of fear that we would suffocate
That we would drown
Lungs spasm. Blood and heart
And thence brain deoxygenated
Without it.

Hand-Crank Paper

Don't ask me to speak aloud.
There are switches to
Fill in blanks
In cadence
Imprecise and chopped together
From your scraps.

Double time my interpretation into
Auditory stimulation of
Communication centers
Beyond the inherent
Protocol for the duration of
The mechanism.

(music boxes cranked fast
Distort tunes
Throw off gears
And break springs. )

I need no words

I need no words
To fly
To scream or to
Let you know yes
To communicate
Create build love empower.


Words are only involved
Because you would call me
Storyless
Deny my oppression as real
And yeah this is bending
Into it but


You never would learn
Without your own
Supports and adaptations.


Maybe your over dependance
Is your own damn
Limit of "vision."



----

Written in response to "typical" language processing privilege by otherwise awesome community storytellers, Allied Media Conference in Detroit, June 29th, 2012

I wish that I could stop
comparing to you.
But every time I do
it seems I'm through being me
and I don't want to disagree on this one
I feel the world as it-- slips away.

One thousand one goals
fill up the glass
overturned on tables
as strangers pass going nowhere
real real fast to leave me here on my knees.
And I can't find the words to say -- please.

Last night I baked bread
with your soy sauce
offering to being unlost
But you just slipped past with my tears.
the last thing he remembers is my fears, dear,
And I don't have the pride to call you-- back.

Echoed at 3 and 24

My niece has been

echoing and copying

everything lately. She copies

words from

upset teens on TV-

"My life, my family no

one cares about my life!"-

when she is

upset and

Bounces across the room

in joy joy joy

with words from

Lilo and Stitch on her lips.

But she's 3, and

so it's normal for her

at that age to echo

echo echo echo

words.

I can't find the words

to say everything and

so I send her, him copied words

of my self

doubt- "Fast as You Can

run free yourself from me"-

and cite, cite, recite the words

from songs

saying I

Love "Something", "I Want

You, you so bad"

bubbling the beatles and

Fiona and Adele and raging

Rise Against As I

"Pulled on these

bootstraps so hard

that they broke." at

24, it's a pathology.

________

Written in Response to Julia's blog post, Metaphors Are Important: An Ethnography Of Robotics, as a comment. The following songs are echo'd in this: Fast As You Can by Fiona Apple; Something and I Want You (She's So Heavy) by the Beatles; Disparity By Design by Rise against. Links are to Youtube videos with the lyrics on screen.

Wanting

Want and I

know each other intimately

as two lovers.

The days of my childhood

are familiar to her tangles

As the desperation that

melts together hunger and lust

the need of both desire

and survival in a tango of

all the things we'd wished

we had forgotten.

If only Want

was as easy to divorce

as a spouse.

If I could just split down

the middle the cold and

fear and the Heat and joy

that we've shared in the years

of our youth, our pursuit

sometimes foolish and

yet sometimes more of the

order of endurance.

Without her-

Want- there'd be no need

to endure.

I could fade away without

the regrets of giving away

dreams, or the gloom of

hopeless inevitability. I

Know her as a lover in

Sadness and in Dawning

the passion of ambition

and the terror of his words.

(I can't help but

think without her, his words

would have slipped

Aside as water

on oil instead of scarring to

find me wanting.)