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Transmission

This is where we close down/
        ^   
this is where we merge/
        ^   
the beat is in the heart stop/
    ^
the flood is in the mind/
        ^   
the pain is in the brain of the tussle
when your mouth moves
on mine/—boom boom/
^            ^   
the muse of the muscle in the words/
^        ^ ^
the fuse of the light in the chemistry/
^ ^        ^   
the fire of the lit is greened/
^ ^ ^
the black of it is shot through/
^ ^ ^ ^
look at that!/
    ^   
the same in the synapse/
^ ^
of the babymother heart/
^ ^ ^
There is where we went soft/
            ^   
there is where we part/
^
on the left the word is cut down/
            ^
on the right you get the hard/
            ^   
the way the salt cuts the way the song silts
^ ^
in the wrong start you have the
^
long hits/ he’s in the strong threads/
^            ^   

you’ve got the short straw/
        ^   

it’s on the hot side/ the hand will with-draw/
    ^            ^
the signal gets there/
    ^   
the signal comes first/
    ^
you’ll need to meet here/
        ^
where we join up/
    ^   
where we touch hands/
    ^
in the dark part/
    ^
in the close down
^
it will go
fast
^

Quantify

I’m paying attention to affect felt at the edges –
this will be my raw data.
But lately grief or joy, surges of weightless emotion
overcome me unexpectedly, leaving
no edges at all—the way black holes are both empty and full;
I hear about a philosopher who became docile with factory work;
an astrophysicist who is chasing an interstellar light sail to find other life;
and there are no edges; surges of weightless emotion
as the body feels on a rollercoaster, falling
as dizziness has overcome me recently,
turning in my sleep, my mind left behind in the dream
hitting my skull, disobeying inertia—
and this anonymous image of personhood,
this brings the surge too; to reduce
a whole life to a grey scan—this is sad to me;
but equally sad is how, again at the edges, you see the ripples
like fingerprints
like something only capable of being made once.