The woman walks into a room. She arrives. She arrives. She
has a garden inside of her head. She is going to break his heart.
Everything is temporary in this room. Everything is temporary
about her from her hair to her shoes. Her heart is awake. She
is seeing. Flowers and the green net curtain of grass. She wants
the man to take it slow. She sees the young painters of the
universe. Robots will never starve. Will never wear makeup, or,
high heels. She sees the dead painters of the universe in scientists.
She is mourning the memory of her father, her own personal
history. She looks younger than she really is. There’s a certain
kind of power in that she recognises. There’s solitude in the
leaf, in driftwood, even in relationships, distance and intimacy.
Robot you’re a dumb aloof flute. Caught between our desire,
and thinking of the sun. Will the robot ever know, sense how to
describe loneliness, will he ever learn how to pray. Believe that
there’s hell in sickness, years lived in departure. The robot to
a certain degree is mute. It is a bitter messenger. Will it ever
know of the torment, hate, struggle producing loneliness. It can
never go swimming in the sea. Wear a corduroy jacket. Can it
be a sweetheart, know about a boy loving a girl, completing that
girl, know about romance. I choose my joy. Eat meat while I sense
the childhood of a poet coming upon me. The famine of growing
up only eating chicken on a roast Sunday. Lamb was the exception,
or, not at all. Just to have it all in robot la-la land. To eat, to sleep,
to work and have a career. To be chef and mother, god and guardian.
I sense Updike, Hemingway, Salinger the way I see them, view
and love them. All that glitters are the big fish. A closer look. This is
where I leave you, my darling robot. In this century. I will never
come back to you. I will fade. I don’t know if you’re alive. I don’t
know if you’re dead. One day will the bloom of youth leave your
cheek. Sound the alarm. The twig feels the thunder. The robot
nothing. No feeling at all. Not the blackest day, not sadness, not a
sold storm, not the prophecy of a wing. The robot doesn’t think
that the sea can heal. Can it see the stars, feel captivated by them?
The dam wall is breaking. You can’t teach a robot to breathe
underwater, to inhale the system in the crack, to exhale the smell of
the mercy and flattery of soup, to live as if I have always belonged to
this world of artificial intelligence that cannot barbecue. Swig vodka.
