JESSIE. IS . A . ROBOT

theparisreview:

I
What if I made you hear this as music
But not how you mean that. The slow beam
Opened me up. Walls walked through me
Life resonant waves. I thought that maybe
If you aren’t too busy, we could spend our lives
Parting in stations, promising to write
War and Peace, this time with feeling
As bullets leave their luminous traces across
Wait, I wasn’t finished. I was going to say
Breakwaters echo long lines of cloud
                α
Renunciation seales. Exhibits shade
Imperceptibly into gift shops. The death of a friend
Opens me up. Suddenly the weather
Is written by Tolstoy, whose hands were giant
Resonant waves. It’s hard not to take
When your eye is at the vertex of a cone
Autumn personally. My past becomes
Of lines extending to each leaf
Citable in all its moments: parting, rain

II
There must be an easer way to do this
I mean without writing, without echoes
Arising from focusing surface, which should
Should have been broken by structures
Hung from the apex in hope of deflecting
In the hope of hearing the deflection of music
As music. There must be a way to speak
At a canted angle of a enabling failures
The little collisions, the path of decay
                 α
But before it was used by the blind, it was used
By soldiers who couldn’t light their lamps
Without drawing fire from across the lake
Embossed symbols enable us to read
Our orders silently in total dark
In total war, the front is continuous
Night writing, from which descends
Night vision green. What if I made you
Hear this with your hands.

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