HE DREAMT WITH OPEN EYES: A CYBORG DREAM

MY POEM TODAY was prompted by an Aeon Magazine essay on "Cyborg Dreams" of technology liberating man from the shackles of the body. Even Steve Jobs, bless his departed soul, did not think so. He dreamt with open eyes.


HE DREAMT WITH OPEN EYES


(For Steve Jobs+)

Dance a digital dream, and spin a web
around this globe where everyone knows
if you floss your teeth, or pick your nose,
if you still venture out of your craven cave.

Did you earn enough to buy a paperbook
that made you a little prince of a pauper,
when learning meant to read or to hunger
for that leftover burger, or die in a nook,

coupling with a book, ranting of a stable
boy, romping in hay, dung, and cackling
hen with the Lady of the Manor, stripping
bare all that is noble, her drawers on a table?

Dance the jig of the devil astride the tombs
of the slovenly, slothful, and obtuse writers,
who bartered their dreams with publishers
stuffed with ducats, scribblers with crumbs.

Dare you now liberate these dumb brothers
who dream with closed eyes, sing rhymes
like drooling mutes, or untinkling chimes?
Internet, iPad, Kodo, Kindle, their druthers,

you dreamt them with open eyes and saw
that nightmares are only for the blind,
all who dream with closed eyes, the kind
who cannot see behind walls grass also grow.

--- Albert B. Casuga