Dear HP community, my friends, I've been thinking about this for a while and now is the time to act and propose you a challenge :)
I would love to hear from you about this: what does it meen to you to be human? It might not be an easy question but let's give it a try.
In the face of virtual worlds, AI, in the dazzling speed of our world, in the face of our severing ourselves from nature, I find the topic relevant. I hope you do too.
Please feel free to address the challenge any way you like, with depth or shallowness, with fun, humour or depth of thought, with your felt sense or otherwise. As you wish, in comments bellow or maybe in a piece of writing. I hope to hear from you and I won't be offended if I don't. Maybe we can write a collective poem, who knows?
Warmly,
Irina

i crave for loneliness to brush my hair,
mother me tenderly to sleep
as you did when i had carvings
on my left wrist at twelve years old
—a braille i fondled with every day,
                   i. don't want. to be. here.

somehow, my nightly hiccups
never drove me to my end.
i am still gentle because
you follow me wherever i go;
visiting me at the right moments
especially when i am accompanied
by my own ***** and the cold bathroom floor—
          and then you stay quiet the whole hour
          to give me some time to grieve.

i wear you like a protective charm now,
for you are the only love i've ever known.

i think i exist only to love
but never experience,
a pretentious bag of bones like me
will only stir your feelings
     —you will wallow in it for some time
     and then you will forget about me
like a cup of coffee that has gone cold.

but if i must admit,
it's because i do stunt my own growth:
in life, in love, but strangely enough,
                                           not in death.
an odd number of reasons
aid my tendencies;
they get glued together to form
a paper-maché of well-composed farewells
—a craft i have mastered in my years of longing.

i think i exist only to love,
but never experience—
yet here i am, still longing
until i get a hand to hold.

My mind was made of moonlight and fresh strawberries
Of a sunset kissing the perfect G chord
The interweavings of dreams and earth
A push and pull kind of mentality
Suspended in air
Until the last breath falls
My words are glass,
Sleek and breakable but
Strong against the wind
I dont forget a face
Or a mental illness
My songs are a life of their own
My stories, a world incongruous with reality
I've been sewn together with slivers of ocean foam
I've been given eyes of the first winter breeze
I am incomplete
I hold the world in a box buried in my chest
Beating away
Away
Away

I've got a licence to be poetic
and I'm not afraid to use it
Can I stop you for a moment
cos I think you need to hear this

I can work with a little discord
I can dance with juxtaposition 
I'm even sometimes partial to
suggestion by omission 

I've got a licence to be poetic
and I'm not afraid to use it
I've got a mouthful of metaphor
and little time to chew it

I get giggly with similes 
and silly with alliteration 
I'm warning you now
I'm devoted to proper diction

I've got a licence to be poetic
and I'm not afraid to use it
So give me some extra space
cos I think I'm going to lose it

I'm in love with eloquence
and I fawn for fluency 
I can't get near enough
of off-beat rhymic lunacy 

I've got a licence to be poetic
and I'm not afraid to use it
But I use it for the good
and avoid the call for nasty

I'm tired of hearing hate
bred from agressive bitterness
I'm looking to collaborate
with writers with forgiveness 

I've got a licence to be poetic
and I'm not afraid to use it
So let's sit down to talk
cos I think you need to hear this

Intrinsically
the mother of all lovers
a Haiku story

On Youtube,
from the Camera holder POV,
- we, the living, we are first to have these eyes,
augmented us,
memory arrays of instants
with days and hours and minutes and
just nows
between them and us/nows
and whens
thens

this becomes, in a trickle or a flood, a sense
I know the good is done, being
directly from the sense
we call common.