i heard you treasure your anklet,
to lose it you won't let,
in that case, I wanna be that bracelet,
that you'll never forget

you say you love this band,
though I do not really understand.
but if you demand,
I'll let myself be ******

and you tell you like your coffee
with a little side of berry,
if so let me be your cherry
if only you just let me.

true enough I liked you first,
these feelings perhaps are cursed.
however even in your worst,
i'd still wanna be yours.

oh what good would it do
if you knew I waited for you.
back at where we met
when things were all set

its true whenever I cry
i hear you crumble and sigh
and the looks I gave,
were just stares engraved

but darling, I do not expect.
i fear you'll go and reject
that I waited for that seven-hour flight
though I was frightened by the bite

What I love about Star Trek isn’t the plots or even the characters. It’s their casual, daily use of fantastic technologies (think replicators) - for them, the ordinary. It mirrors our own banal use of magic-like wireless, google searches and air travel.
We are marvelous monkeys.

I’m a teenager. I am new and agog - Jesus, I have a lot to learn. How are the many marvels that elevate our lives actually made? The millions of cars, the fuel distribution systems, our skyscrapers. Who thought of all this?
We’re marvelous monkeys.

We can almost cheat death - I saw Marilyn Monroe on TV last night.
It wasn't the real star - just the image of her purring sexuality. The her without the messy adopted-child neuroses, chemical dependencies, loneliness and deeper longings. But it's early days - her DNA is lying around here somewhere.
We’re marvelous monkeys.

It’s Hard Not To Be Optimistic: An Updated Sonnet to Science
by Michael R. Burch

“DNA has cured deadly diseases and allowed
labs to create animals with fantastic new
features.” ― U.S. News & World Report

It’s hard not to be optimistic
when things are so wondrously futuristic:
when DNA, our new Louie Pasteur,
can effect an autonomous, miraculous cure,
while labs churn out fluorescent monkeys
who, with infinite typewriters, might soon outdo USN&WR’s flunkeys.

It’s hard not to be optimistic
when the world is so delightfully pluralistic:
when Schrödinger’s cat is both dead and alive,
and Hawking says time can run backwards. We thrive,
befuddled drones, on someone else’s regurgitated nectar,
while our cheers drown out poet-alarmists who might Hector

the Achilles heel of pure science (common sense)
and reporters who tap out supersillyous nonsense.

NOTE: I am a fan of both real science and science fiction, and I like to think I can tell the difference, at least between the two extremes. I feel confident that Schrödinger didn’t think the cat in his famous experiment was both dead and alive. Rather, he was pointing out that we can’t know until we open the box, scratchings and smell aside. While traveling backwards in time is great for science fiction, it seems extremely doubtful as a practical application. And as for DNA curing deadly diseases ... well, it must have created them, so perhaps don’t give it too much credit!

Submitted to U.S. News & World Report

Dear Editor,

While I’m usually a fan of your magazine, as a writer I must take to task the Frankensteinian logic of the excerpt I cited, and I challenge you to publish my “letter” as proof that poets do have a function in the third millennium, even if it is only to suggest that paid writers should not create such outlandish, freakish horrors of the English language.

Somewhat irked, but still a fan,
Michael R. Burch

Keywords/Tags: science, fiction, quantum, physics, Hawking, Schrodinger, cat, DNA, infinite, monkeys, typewriters, Shakespeare, lab, animals, new, features

Mizaru
A mother without a son,
A son without a father,
And a family without a mother.
A smoke cloud raised and the universe cried,
While the rest of the world was holding an umbrella.

Kikazaru
A sister without a brother,
A brother without a sister,
And a child without a childhood.
Towns drowned in the rivers of blood,
While the rest of the world was sailing on a boat.

Iwazaru
People without a home,
Home without the people,
Is just a sand without a purpose.
Cultures got wiped from the books of history,
While the rest of the world was looking at the screens.

Humanity died and the world is left to the three monkeys.

-

[Note : i am flushed with heartbeats,
fast panic breaths
and thought.
i have overwhelming stream of ideas]



...it’s ridden through in our flooded veins

it’s furnishing our museums

  it’s marred out on parchment

     it’s mated together in privacy


      [Note : i tighten my eyes closed for relief]


     forbidden

      persecuted

     tried and executed

    preserved in wetland peat

   it can be called out

without the feed of the moon

without the woe of the ocean


 [Note : i clamp my hands over my ears]


senses

census

pleasured

genetically vetted

it can be rutted out

  falling **** through the generations

    the speed of the molecule

   or flitted across our grid electrically

    microscope

     magnet

     telescope

      prism

      morse distressed

     music

    pressed

   repressed

  and invested against

through historical text

it’s collected in your visage

and yawned back at you

  off of your morning mirror

   it’s in your needings

    your trolling of prayers and personalities

     and the breaking of your vocal jockery

    
     [Note : i dry gag and go silent]


     information is energy

    not erased

  but converted...

   ...and then nothingness

    an unwearable yelling void

     expanding pressure-less

      precipice

       rapid

     the immense feeling

    of feeling nothing

   the code/no-code

  the necessary ill behind the facade

of the purpose currency


[Note : my thoughts slow,
i note my breath
and my heart]

Strapped to the outside of a rocket ship with nothing in the way.
I took off, and I just kept going. Reaching a height higher than heaven.
Nothing to orient myself. No time. No space. No self. Nothing but darkness stretching out all around me.
A roar of a million voices trying to scream over eachother resonates through my head.
I then came into orbit. Everything begun to crystalize.
No longer was I confounded to the restrictions of flesh. By birth and by death. I was out of my shell. Out of my world.

Complex geometrical patterns formed around me. Beating. Breathing. Moving. Almost like they were alive.
I had no way to process this. It was all so perfoundly alien. This was not my world. "Where the **** am I?" I thought
Terror possesses me. I feel like I am going to **** myself. Then all of a sudden these beings of indescribable features surround me, telling me to relax. "Relax now. Take it in. Settle down."
They told me they were my guides. They were going to show me around.

They gave me the tour of this universe, "Look at this! Look at that!" they said excitedly, showing me worlds that I can not explain, yet they seemed to reflect me.

I suddenly lost them. Where has my tour group gone?!
Suddenly these entites besieged me. Giving off negative energy. Holy ****! Jesters with tight pants and bell hats. Giving me the finger. They were so mischevious. Surrounding. Laughing. Jumping inside of me. ****** my soul. Is this what hell feels like?!

The darkness begins to clear, as a large face of a shimmering blue woman, with flaming white hair blowing in a non-existant wind, comes into view. Her face has so much dimension, with thousands of other faces upon her own. A snake tongue escapes through her lips, wrapping around me, pulling me into her mouth. I am flung into a space that is pure white, and a warm tingling sensation fills me.
This is what heaven feels like. This is my home. I think I found god.
I have never felt so much love. I have never felt so alive.

I then opened my eyes, trying to process my surroundings. I was in my home. On the couch. Sitting in front of the tv. My friend Jason was sitting next to me. He asked me what did I see. I leaped off of the couch, screaming "It is all a simulation!" I pulled my shirt off, swinging it around like Daniel from the bible. I tried to throw myself down the stairs, but was stopped when Jason tackled me. He held me in a chokehold, and while this was happening I exclaimed:

"On earth I am just a monkey,
but out there I am so much more.
I am not just a speck on a spinning ball.
I am more than the skin I wear,
More than the title I bear.
There is so much out there.
This world is not real.
What is real is me."

When I finally calmed down, Jason asked me how I was doing.
I looked up at him and I said "I am a work in process."