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The Robots Are Coming

with clear-cased woofers for heads,

no eyes. They see us as a bat sees

a mosquito—a fleshy echo,

a morsel of sound. You’ve heard

their intergalactic tour busses

purring at our stratosphere’s curb,

awaiting the counter intelligence

transmissions from our laptops

and our earpieces, awaiting word

of humanity’s critical mass,

our ripening. How many times

have we dreamed it this way—

The Age of the Machines,

the post industrial specter

of tempered paws, five welded fingers

wrenching back our roofs,

siderophilic tongues seeking blood,

licking the crumbs of us from our beds.

O, it won’t be pretty, America.

What land would you trade

for our lives? A treaty inked

in advance of metal’s footfall.

Give them Detroit. Give them Gary,

Pittsburgh, Braddock—those forgotten

nurseries of girders and axels.

Tell the machines we honor their dead,

distant cousins. Tell them we left

those cities to repose of respect

for the bygone era of molten metal.

Tell them Carnegie and Ford

were giant men, that war glazed

their palms with gold. Tell them

we humans mourn the ecosystem

of manufacture all the same.