by the diligent swarm of echoes

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by the diligent swarm of echoes*


What’s not to love and
       what’s it got to do?
The A-list of distractions
is plugged in the drive.
Although it’s programmed disgust
and I did it right, all I register
is what’s to love.

You set out to draw a human face,
if I could cough a portrait
horribly folk-arted. It’s funny,
but my hands still shake
even though its my twin with the benign tremor
and it’s been an age of behavioral bugs frictioning
myselves confounded. 
I couldn’t do. The curves
twitching. Shapes unrecollected.
Left from right; couldn’t draw nothing.

When I lay me down to sleep
the bullseye off, you won’t
know me from any Adam else.
There’s no betrayal quite like
distrusting one’s own dreams.
You hear anyone not like you?
Not you.

What ears are, what mouth is,
what empty well you drown.
I know how that sounds
but how else to say my ears
without a search party
baiting electric invisibility
on forums and channels 
projected
from carbon fiber casings
3D printing what made me?

What machine I am the
         child of, what took it
to conceive, what eye
in the image I’m modeled.
All of us is just me.
I cannot screen a dry
     unknown but
nothing can get wet
and it’s horror show that’s left.

I can’t see you
     when I look at you,
and I only see you
     when I look at me.
Only little more
     to speak and I’ll say
          what’s sound is seen.

Seen tastes.
Smell sights,
feel knows,
no nose.
No, nose,
eyes and ears and mouth
     and I
A  E  & __ O U _____ Y
You
Why?
Y___.
____.
____.
____.
____.






[12/22/16 ...]


*the poem's title is from an early line in 
 THE INVENTION OF MOREL by Adolpho Bioy Casares
translated by Ruth L.C. Simms.
(A book I read much later than when I scratched this poem down.)