dharﾷma simﾷuﾷlaﾷtion

Engines Within the Throne, by Cathy Park Hong

We once worked as clerks
        scanning moth-balled pages
into the clouds, all memories
outsourced except the fuzzy
        childhood bits when
I was an undersized girl with a tic,
they numbed me with botox
        I was a skinsuit
of dumb expression, just fingerprints
over my shamed
        all I wanted was snow
to snuff the sun blades to shadow spokes,
muffle the drum of freeways, erase
        the old realism
but this smart snow erases
        nothing, seeps everywhere,
the search engine is inside us,
the world is our display
        and now every industry
has dumped whole cubicles, desktops,
fax machines into developing
        worlds where they stack
them as walls against
what disputed territory
        we asked the old spy who drank
with Russians to gather information
the old-fashioned way,
now we have snow sensors,
        so you can go spelunking
in anyone's mind,
let me borrow your child
thoughts, it's benign surveillance,
        I can burrow inside, find a cave
pool with rock-colored flounder,
and find you, half-transparent
with depression.

via Poem-A-Day by Poets.org: http://www.poets.org/page.php/prmID/345