(with enduring love for Richard Lopez Sr.)

You'll wake up 
some morning 
with energy you simply 
aren't used to. It 
will flicker and flood 
through your bloodstream, 
Through the 
dancing electricity 
of your muscles and 
your nerves. Through, 
up and through the 
hidden fingers that 
have purchased into 
the tunnels of 
the elusive treasure 
of your thoughts; the 
warm blood thoughts 
of territory, of 
appetite, of lust 
and hope and 
chivalry. You'll 
wake up with a 
skeleton as firm 
and confident as stone. 
You'll wake up with 
blood as smart as 
wine or a 
horse with silver eyes. 
You'll still be part machine, 
of course, but the fear of 
a machine 
will not be your fear. 

You won't be fated to 
planned obsolescence, nor 
the cruelty of sycophants 
and arrogant dullards. 

You are not 
the prize-addict. 
You are not the defeated 
woman calling her 
neighbor to make the 
daily useless inquiry. 

You are not 
their unwashed 
floors, dishes, 
the desperate lawns 
strangled blind with 
a lifetime of crosseyed 
wealth. 

You...are the dream of 
you. The thread and 
the flesh, lungs, heart, 
cells that the thread 
is searching for, 
climbing to the morning, 
the tomorrow 
when your entropic soul 
rejoins its favorite ancestors. 

****