Poetz.com: Poetry Changes People

two poems

TECH

Fear of technology, fear of machines

taking over the workplace,

the home, the brain stood huge,

cumbersome, with flailing branches—

an elm in the cerebrum.

When we stopped fretting over it,

paid it no mind, accepted

the screens, the keyboards, the beeps,

bowed to the authority of

the all-encompassing bath of electrons

something happened: the mind

faded to blackout…

It’s a bit of an irksome itch

this prison of obsolete fingers/limbs,

thoughts filled with zero,

numb tongues, hearts in coffins.

A heart that won’t pump

is a heart worth fearing.

Beat a little, won’t you?

Talk to me.

CAMERA

You never know whether

a camera’s on you,

trained on you, tracing you.

You can not say no

to the invisible lens

intent on making you visible,

copying your contour,

plundering your profile,

pondering the embarrassing

puff of your too-fleshy nose.

It creates a portrait

of your limp, your stutter,

your tick, your stumble:

a big-eyed neighbor,

a big-mouthed biographer,

a nightmare biography

available to all.

Plentitude. So many pages

and all of them you and more you

magnified--a telescopic view

fine-tuned beyond anything

Galileo thought of or desired.

Nowadays it’s here: a lens

bright with all-seeing might,

so ablaze with light

that all is distorted

and there is nothing left to see.

Austin Alexis has published in the anthologies Off the Cuffs: Poetry by and about the Police,And We the Creatures and Bowl of Stories and in Barrow Street, The Journal and elsewhere. Some of his reviews have appeared in The Arts Cure. He was a fellow at the Wurlitzer Foundation of New Mexico. He teaches at New York City College of Technology in Brooklyn and lives in the East Village.