This is a new poem I read for the first time at my recent feature at La Mama Poetica.
The fifth poem (though not necessarily part 5) of my Eulogies for Dead Technology series.
The plan was simple. Give a spark of life by
an electric muscle twitch. To the body
and from the body, a fistful of blood for
so long as the rhythm can be kept.
Sometimes the beat does not go on and we
try to replicate what is broken. Yet while
we imagine this simple device to be made
of gold or glass or stone;
While we wear them on our sleeves and steal
others, we make new ones from plastic and
titanium and place them like a cuckoo’s egg
in the nest of our ribcage.
Sometimes it’s only the egg that breaks, and
this strange heart is accepted into
the fold but too often, it is treated like
an uninvited guest.
The new beat is one that
the body can’t dance to,
it longs for the simple plan
that failed and was abandoned.