The New Symbiosis

Sitting at the keyboard

Fingers poised

Waiting for the pinball

To drop down the shoot

Electric bumpers rejecting rapidly

Lights flashing

With epileptic consequences

Bells ringing in praise of St Tintinitus.

I am comforted by the escape.

 

Time

Man’s mortal enemy

Stands still

While moving.

 

There was a time of symbiosis

Between the fingers and the brain

Sometimes

A gentle cradling

Sometimes

A fierce death grip

The brain responding with flowing lines

Or fitsandstarts

Recalling what eyes had never seen

And the fingers did ballet or bugaloo

Attached to umbilicals of the past

Or searching the future.

 

Now the tapdancer is king

Looking for the key (stroke) that unlocks

Endorphins

and endolphins

hoping not to be mistaken for Tuna.

 

Flat plastic

Celebrating Dustin Hoffman

As we graduate to instancy

To instant change

To modify and codify faster than a breath.

 

And Time, Man’s mortal enemy

But only source of change

Keeps standing still

While moving.

 

I would spread a blanket on a grassy hillside

Surrounded by malignant dandelions

And stare a poem

Into the shape-shifting clouds

 

I would bare my breast on an overlook

Shouting a poem

Into the rocks and rivers

 

But I sit (clack)

And sit (click)

Becoming one with my tool

Memorized by moving lines.

 

And time

Man’s only friend

Moves

As though

It’s standing still.