poem meets painting
appeal to those who love
saving flawed greenware from firing.
Prototypes and blueprints
if stopped in time will not
crash or burn –
only the promising
break. To be immune
to ruin, never be complete –
only the groundbreaking
ages to cliche –
only the fulfilled
spring leaks.
How privileged, then, to be
invisibly peripheral –
the forgotten backup plan
never stooping to auxiliary
or, even less than ornamental,
necessary.
Life can be like chess:
Some people see the pieces,
learn how they move,
then are bored to death
as opposing forces play out.
Others, hooked immediately
by nearly infinite strategic possibilities,
dedicate themselves solely
to mastering its mysteries.
Then an 8-year-old
hands their asses to them
simultaneously, like assembly line dolls.
Eventually, such skill and luck
both lose and win. Imagine:
in 1994, a computer
wipes the floor with him.
Impressed, jealous,
reaching toward the wall,
he pulls the plug.
what something took
then in turn is taken
like mathematicians’ axioms
we hope are not mistaken.
Synonyms lose nuance in
the best of our translations
as existence grips our atoms
due to Newton’s legislations.
