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. )

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.