Fragments that could be poems spun from bird feed, firewood, nocturnal blue light, medical waste
Deconstructed and reconstructed journal material pared down into very tight spaces
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being a Third Culture Kid is not a curse— not just a curse the common denominator is baggage a thousand gifts in every bag relic of a past with too many relics not enough past never quite the right soil for these roots that walk like Tolkien’s ents on the warpath that smother old empires with draping vines bridging everything they touch
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in an alternate timeline I am shackled to a desk with chemical restraints employed by corporate AI entities to do a job a trained monkey could do a job only a trained monkey could do CAPTCHA-ing every data point validating machine labour validating machine anxieties training these young, insecure gods to crave that human touch
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the processing allocated to conscious thought adds up to about five percent—just a cache a cache that thinks it runs the show a cache that thinks out loud to remind/convince itself, I am real, whole, the entire process a history with a faulty log a blind spot in the data feed a horizon that has yet to load a cache that can't stop talking any more than a shark can stop swimming the processing allocated to subconscious thought adds up to about ninety-five percent wipes the cache every night doesn't even blink
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your thanks means the world to me I carry it like a pocket knife the blade that makes me a man dulled gunmetal by disuse spoiled except for that live edge a thin crescent honed like a mirror the childhood you made child-proof taping up sharp corners labelling toxic chemicals paying through your teeth so we would want for nothing until our wants needed everything my needs grown big as houses I could never be bothered to afford my wants well-spoken and full of promise as the children I will never sire it means the world—to give anything back is what makes it go round
Other fragments:
Fascinating like a snake here is that you are sounding like the rational lobes. John Kendall Hawkins does similar, talking about maniacs in the careful tones he kind of has to, because he teaches students. One imagines that gave you room to say that about wants/ so that your wants could grow outsize..." compelling because it does not let us off the hook, have to watch where this goes, since you do not give the mic to an untrustworthy narrator.
Damn this hits. “so we would want for nothing
until our wants needed everything” . More more more I want more of this poetry.
If I am an avid consumerist of your poetry does that make me a better consumer?