I am collecting for the Anti-
Robot Sex League. What you give
Will be used to lobby for legislation
That will ensure robots do not
configure themselves for machine
To machine intercourse, and thus start
Merging technologies completely unsupervised.
You have heard the arguments:
Robots - left to mix and match components,
Might from the schematics for their varied
Attachments create new and independent
Micro-bots - could soon raise a race
Whose overrides we cannot know,
Which have no programmed purpose,
That have undocumented execution code.
It is both a practical and a moral
Argument. They seem to have fun,
However that is defined in machine terms,
In rumbling through the simulated act.
Soon this reprehensible practice could lead
To marriage, idiomatic mate selection,
Repair and maintenance obscenely repurposed.
It could lead to independence,
A species of self-designed robots
That expects to do the work that
Randomly in their new configurations
They seem fully capable of doing.
What could be next? Voting?
Elected office? Soon, a right
To explore the possibilities of becoming
Bio-mechanical? Imagine
Where that could lead us. So, please,
Give what you can, ask your neighbors
To give; and in your next re-charge cycle
Shut all the way down to mere ceramics and metal
And be glad that you still can.
The mute thinks:
It is important to interrogate
everyday objects
with the eyes.
Each solitary wounded soul interrogates--turning onto the night-street,
or dusky avenue for that matter--houses on quaint rows...
an open door resembles hope...
despair is a doorknob no longer hard or solid.
A closed house on the corner is a menace...
or solace from the frenzied world. Does the leaning shadow
near the lamppost hide more threats?
A window on the street shows
a phantom family having dinner...
the shadow forms of mother, father, son
move in predictable, machine patterns
around the sad dinette.
Meanwhile a lonely silhouette walks off-curb, stuffs hands in pockets,
views autumnal clouds, intuits waves of question marks hanging in heavy dead air...
near an exposed screen a man bows to an open page,
a desk hiding his box of letters shy and unsent.
there is a mystery woman near the shadow poplar
she is going to some square
to meet with friends.
There is a square centered with roguish trees...
there is a man somewhere who hears no music, only scratching
Right now I hear shuffling, grating... street sounds... no music... no music at all...
but I was told... that once I reached the city of long shadows
the music one loves is always aired in the streets.
