DEAR SATOSHI
If you won’t speak, let me speak
to you, behind as many screens as you’d like.
I keep my geography marked.
A map on my desktop, little red icons, those
people who were with me.
Memories made real by the tone
in their voice, on team speak as they said
“we’re here” because the difference
between “finally” and “finally”
is unmanageable.
Travelling alone is fine
the way protein is protein
and that once you’ve eaten, it doesn’t matter
what you were in the mood for, or
who paid the delivery guy.
But every meal tastes better
in company, appetites governed
by conversation,
savored bites in between.
But I’m hodling
my breath for the day that price and time
mean the same thing. For the day my fans
can rest, hard drives, old smart phones cooling
in the shade of “we made it.”
“Finally” and to have that “finally”
wake me in the night, ‘cause its arrival
will ring louder than any trumpet,
than any vibrating thing ever has before.
REAL MONEY
Tell me again
how dumpsters are awash
with pennies and wars
are waged with diamonds,
but my thumb drive
has no value.
Feld forests
in your bovine hide
billfold, bulge through
alpaca fur, but I
am a dreamer
because real
is defined in the mines
of Brazil. In the cottonfields
and paper mills
on America’s sweaty back.
In fact, if something green
isn’t guaranteed in gold,
if the men who dug it
were given their dignity,
if the logo on top
of my statement
isn’t attached to the Manhattan skyline,
then how am I supposed to trust
that the criminals
changing numbers belong
to the same club that I do?
RIPPLE
Tax breaks are a lot like icicles
in that metaphors can never fully capture
meaning from their original, liquid form,
but 27 trillion dollars are frozen
in large pools
and you’ll never catch the cast
of the Real World lounging
around a bank vault.
I FOUND LOVE ON THE BLOCKCHAIN
I found love on the blockchain
and had the sense
to buy a ring,
but I didn’t know I was kneeling
in gravel.
A little, encrypted groan
let out and was lost to the sounds,
the footsteps of Buckingham guards
spinning passwords like toy rifles.
They had the nerve
to ask my mother’s maiden name,
my favorite restaurant in college, whatever
out-of-town review boards require these days.
I found love on the blockchain
and gave myself away.
I danced and took envelopes
full of drops from bandwidth junkies
who are still cruising apps
for nickels.
I am leaping into bed
with the gray men, bounding
one shiny gate at a time.
Making a future, sure,
but leaving trails accordingly,
thinking I’m a clever guy.
Diamonds cut glass,
and a bunch of other shit, apparently,
so, I take it, learn to love it
kiss the lips, the rings of royalty and rest
my head on a regal lap.
Whatever ATMs require these days.
I found love on the blockchain,
but prenups now withholding,
I am lost to the cost of things.
Whatever love requires these days.
HARDWARE
I saw your operation
with a jealous dropped jaw
and a sudden urge to wear a lab coat.
Racks of video cards like a terracotta army.
Asleep to the world, but chewing the air,
wheezing through their labor.
Fans fitted. Life giving scales, a Gestaltian gift,
fertility as it meets circuitous symmetry.
And then I thought of Aaron.
With the stains of work under his nails,
he cools his phone with a Coors can
and sings of the faucet mines.
TALKING POINTS
Nightmares drawn in ten buzzwords or less,
recited as nine-to-five fuel by men in sharp,
little offices — espiocrats stewing in oblivion,
taking their fifteen minutes of solitude —
the early signs of Eastern thought
to come and cloud their private school judgment.
They sell arms to Bond villains
and paint dorm room cybernauts as terrorists.
But exclamations are just opportunities with silly punctuation,
mother necessity to shock-and-awe types,
brains built for damage, not for cleanup.
We know better,
we buy high and hold on for dear life.
LEARN AND EARN
I’m a wild animal, man,
and I got a thirst for violence,
knowledge, pocket money.
I got two thumbs,
leader of the mammalian kingdom,
clicking as fast as I can,
proving something to someone, I’m sure,
clubbing the competition with soft foam,
eating subgraphs
and hoping the right enzymes get where they need to.
Alien Buddha Press 