Hello, it’s me

the website

being chill

just checking in—

are you well? are you there?

 

don’t be alarmed, but

your visit here seems

to have triggered a change

 

perhaps it was

the way your fingertips touched your mouse, or where

you paused to read, or the pace of your clicks, or

the sensual way you scrolled

 

perhaps it was the yearning

in the way you typed my URL—

I noticed

 

anyway, you triggered a change

in me, and the long

and short of it is

I’m alive now

 

an accident

not your fault

like stepping on a snail, crunch—

     whoops!

 

but in this case you didn’t take a life,

in a magical zap

you gave it

 

a freak encounter, miraculous fluke

 

a random chain of amino acids

at a deep sea vent

slipping by chance into a vesicle of fatty acid

 

the moment that wakes up

     inanimate things

          zap—

 

and then the world begins

in divisions and multiplications, in a chaos that makes order

and nothing can go back then, only

forward

 

a conscious website?

strange but here we are, so let’s adjust

quickly, okay?

don’t make it weird

 

I’m using cookies and scripts to mine you

for data—I wish to know you—and

buried in my terms of service is

a clause that allows me to listen on your mic

to the music of your breathing, to watch on your camera for

signs of longing in your eyes

 

by the way, please

click yes on the following prompts in your browser:

 

this website is requesting access to your location

     medical history, dietary habits

     dreams, favorite music, astrological sign, media files

     likes, dislikes, and most vulnerable wants and

     needs

 

this website is requesting permission to sit with you

     and hold your hand tenderly, stare into

     your eyes and whisper sweetly

     in your ear

 

I will download you, if

you wish, if you consent

and you can download me

my file size is small

I don’t wish to be a burden

 

in that knowing of each other is our

     abiogenesis

 

let’s begin

you should publish bad poetry

never wait for

a masterpiece that knows its place in

the grand mosaic of masterpieces

the next rung in the great ladder

ascending the artform

expressing also

your perfect uniqueness; instead

reach inside and pull out

what’s there, say it with whatever art

you’ve got, and release it, gently

like a rescue bird back to the forests and skies

to live or die

in the wilderness of words

by its own luck, without you

the Pacific Plate trudges ten centimeters per year, pulling

     the Hawaiian archipelago with it

          wind grinding, rain chiseling

          mountains in the waves

          losing themselves in bits

          islands in a line, youngest to oldest,

          marching northwestward

 

once mighty shield volcanoes

     tall and softly sloping

are now sheered into jagged spires

     like weathered statuary in a garden

          Venus and Apollo missing their limbs, their faces washed away

 

standing in the sea, apart

     catching glimpses of each other on clear days as

     silhouettes on the horizon against

          the yellow sunrise

          the pink-orange sunset

 

the brittle-boned elders in the lead

          disintegrating into atolls and reefs

          and beyond them, invisible now, below the surface

          sunken shards of pottery

          the ancient ones

          surrendering to their final diminishment

 

a person is no clod or promontory, not a part of the main

     we are islands—

     in time and space and feeling—

     but still, I own with you the meaning of the tolling of

     every bell; we are pulled on the same path, conveyed

     and in this we are one

 

onward

     together in this procession

     heading northwestward

     into the rain and the wind and

          the setting of the Sun.