For the last year I have been waiting
for the perfect opportunity
to respond, "there's an app for that"
to someone, where it's both timely,
funny, and moving,
and the opportunity hasn't come.
Now imagine a robotic space probe
set to do the exact same thing,
roaming through stretches of blank space,
finding improbable evidence of life,
but on no occasion saying those words,
just moving on, forever.
Now zoom, enhance. The genetic code
clicking and zipping and locking,
I think, following fractal patterns
that scale up to the heavens
and down to the Planck length,
but we have no idea what they are,
and anyone who tries to tell you they do
is a fool, and anyone who tries to tell you
that the orders don't exist, just causes,
has a coward's love of violence.
Fear, like God, doesn't exist for him.
We've gone too far.
Zoom back, but keep it pixellated.
See the roaming hills and glossy boulevards,
see the peninsular edges of the map
like green checker squares against blue,
see the vast empty shopping malls
suddenly less empty, the stalls unique shades
of pink and beige, cells of people
who caress my heart from their phones,
the beautiful only becoming more beautiful.
Don't train your heart to rely
on a consistent scale, sliding between them,
skyscrapers becoming astral filaments
and dust motes becoming the solar glare
that tells me you are watching,
my sad, perplexing love.
You may be watching the world becoming
organic twisted knobs of confusion.
Or maybe not, but either way
please avoid my city
on your endless incursions
into unresolvable frames of reference.
Had we lasted,
we might have made a life there.