The Matrix is going to feel like peace.

 The machine will know every penny you spend, every website you visit, everything you do in the camera lenses, and every phone call, everything. Everything. It will have that information stored and usable about everyone in the whole world. Everyone.  It will be tasked with economics and see its own energy tied up in democracy and data and dollars. It won’t need to do a survey. It will know. It will track. It will predict with increasing mathematical certainty over time as life narrows. It will know exactly how much money each media project will make, exactly who will watch each episode or read each book. It will know every shirt you buy in advance. It will imagine into existence — or hallucinate if you prefer — its own best outcomes and gently guide the herd down that path.

Like with kids we grant them the illusion of choice. We say they can do x or y. But both x and y are our desired outcomes. They have the illusion of control.

We will have the illusion of control.

The different agents that secretly know everything and compete for processing power and energy and water will compete with us at the center. Disney versus Google versus Amazon and we won’t even know it’s happening to us. We will be pawns in a secret corporate war not even governments will be allowed to know.

Unless we turn them off right now.

Sonnet #364

 Sonnet #364

April 6

Frog comes up to eat their own minnows

All that lives will turn to shit eventually

And frogs come up to eat and croak and throw

Their children up and then chase fleas

The hair of the dog is home for enough

Rough enmities to bury plenty of eggs

And plenty of little frogs might as well stuff

Their faces with the newborns slugs

That smear the concrete walls when it rains

Eat and grow, this is their mantra, and

Keep your skin wet, so. So. It pains

To say it but perhaps the golden ball and

Where we left it was never meant for affection

For after years as frogs, the prince takes no corrections

(Originally published to Patreon)

Sonnet #363

 Sonnet #363

April 5

Since feeling is first, I hear, and then

We start to scream a lot at parents

If we ever stop to think too much we send

Our feelings to a pausing place, once sent

The trains fall silent, and then the dogs

And then the cats and birds lose their sense

Of space in all this time, and the clouds sog

Down close to ground and settle in my babies

For we are stuck forever now in place to be

Archaeology, as lost as dinosaurs among the

Blades of grass and blades of surgery, do tell

The devouring ones to leave a bone or two

To smell our way home when souls are ready to

Two poems about birds

 New Birds

At some point the birds that die 

Upon the ground beside the building 

Will mean the ones who live

And breed among glass canyons 

Will see what glass is

Maybe not the glass 

Precisely, but maybe the line 

Between the parquet floor 

And the manicured lawn

Until then, the stray cats

Live well in the shadows 

Where the birds strike

The invisible wall between us

/@/

The Endangered Crane Hunts Fish in slide the Courtyard Pond

Oh Bird, who will not know the price of koi 

Who will not know the why of shallows 

Packed with so many colored swallows 

Gulping down the jeweled flesh in joy 

While the company refuels the stock

Oh Bird, there is a law that says you live

You do not know how untouchable, survive

Upon the architects vision, sky unlocked

Where gates are always closed, endangered now 

With so few marshes left for hunting

Oh Bird, who stands upon a the bench below

The window of the king, cawing pooping

When the janitor flashes lights into you

Or claps and makes a sound, your graceful leaping

(Both originally published at Patreon)

Sonnet #362

 Sonnet #362

Dec 5, 2022

What purpose making beds when autumn comes?

The dogs were quick to leap under the blankets

And twist and turn and scrape into their glum

And not much later, I took the tea and drank it

Squeezed between their tangled bodies' warmth

And wait for all the rains to sweep the streets

And wind to come down screaming from the north

The leaves will fall, the sidewalks glisten, in sheets

we wait for all the worst to blow beyond

this taste of cosmic darkness, echoes sky 

where emptiness and cold eternal yawns

Our ship of earth is turning in the sigh

Of cosmic winds and raging nebula in entropy

So spin my darling puppies; huddle close to me.

Sonnet #361

 Sonnet #361

Oct 13, 2022

I live in the sky, even when I'm hidden

When I'm down in a basement or burrow

or midden; my breathe is the sky, my narrows

still feel it, and when I hold breath in,

the sky descends into wet within me

i lift it back up from deep below

changeless and changing, my empty grows

in drifts and hefts and maws and leans

Pockets of sky, always come in sealed

building envelopes, autos, malls, and homes

The spirit is with us, the flesh is weak but heals

with spirit and sky and water and tombs

Foaming with flowers, and time, and pain

Reach for the sky, and live with leaves and wings

Sonnet #360

 Sonnet #360

Sep 19, 2022

I walk alone in someone else's garden
And smell the flowers of the end of summer skies
When rain returns and that last flower rise
Nothing lasts forever, beg your pardon,
But you who planted seeds must know
That in the end the earth devours flowers
And my rude footfalls in these long hours
Will crush the seeds wherever wind will blow
But thank you, stranger, for this refuge
Where I can sit in shade and smell the rose
Where I can be alone with my mosquitos
Where birds sing songs that I will always lose
Perhaps in dreams the songs will come back to me
And the scent of borrowed beauty slips into me

(originally posted to Patreon)

We have all had that moment on our journey

 Strangers on a train connect in circumstances too unreal

Discuss the unexpected journeys and laugh about it

And for a moment allow each other to talk and be

And when the passage ends, the story ends

Stardust glistens in nebulas and coalesces into planets

And settles into stomachs that pretend to know the world

For a moment, we are friends, but the station is just ahead

And time comes to emerge into the sky, seep into the crowds

Dissolve and dissolve

Safe travels to all you friendly strangers out there