Circuitry

by Patrick Mackay
(For Jack Spicer)

The world is a broken machine
And we live in the circuitry
Making love to lose ourselves.

On the hard drive of the heart
None can feel the electric pain.
We smile a facade of riddles:

Who are you, who are you really?
Language is the child that dreams
That he could mend the world

Playing the game for him made by us.
He plays and forgets and plays
Like the surface of a pond

Reflecting the sky, while the rain
Distorts him into bliss.
The rings of his tears are circuitry.

We make a game up to destroy time,
As if it could save us from time,
But a loop always brings us back.

We download our desires into the wreck
And wait in lines for our freedom.
The child plays with who he thinks we are,

But we are not ourselves. The screen
Illuminates only parts of us, the face
Shows only a mirror and the pain

Is as deep as a canyon and echoes
Within our want the same
As fine font that makes us smile.

No one wants to know what is really
Happening. The world is a broken machine
And we live in the circuitry.

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I have published in many magazines in the United States, and in Ambit in the United Kingdom. Most recently E Rattle published a book review I wrote on the SF poet, Klipschutz. Notably, my work has won Honorable Mention in Glimmertrain’s Short Fiction Contest, and Best of the Decade in The Hawaii Pacific Review. A series of Candy Letters lauding Hershey’s, Rolos, and Frito Chips for their superb support of my sugar habit was acknowledged with praise and coupons. The real estate brokerage, Prudential Bache, was so impressed by a letter I wrote on one of their brokers that the president wanted to frame it in his office. Restaurants have given me chocolate ganache cake for descriptions of heights of culinary achievement. In my spare time I teach blind persons at Braille Institute literature. My class can hear a pin drop in a room, hair moving in a soft breeze, and know the intricacies of ESP.