Unrecognizable

If I wrote amazing poetry,
placed two words of artificiality
out of many, would you cry?
In a world of inorganicity
somehow it’s easy to cry.

If I told you a poem didn’t contain any,
would you see me any more clearly?
We’d conserve electricity,
at least. How many neurons fire
to produce a single human tear?

How about a comma,
an em dash nearby.
Surely I’d know how
to pause on my own.
Surely the earth knows
how to set pace on its own.

What great—what small measures
we take to see things more clearly.

Self-published on this site, 2025.