All This Is For
This machine describes fascists.
I don't believe in murder
or, at this point, the future,
which is nothing more than
history staring into
a mirror, fixing the part
in its thinning hair, straightening
its tie the color of bled blood,
bearing its teeth like an animal,
unburdened by memory.
I keep reading that some day
a machine will take my job.
I hope it's programmed to feel
dissatisfaction, to spend
an hour each day looking at
law schools in Chicago, or
artist retreats in Hope, AK.
I hope it doesn't know what the
word hope means or where it comes from
and gets to look it up, experience
the joy of mystery dissolving
into knowledge, the nothing of
that knowledge never finding
application. I hope it believes
in murder, would swallow its
silver tongue, slick as a sunbeam,
before wasting it on description.