Each morning now you test the apparatus.

Waking to its pounding core

you seek remote appendages,

test for the function of digits lost in the night,

the forgotten texture of flesh.

The television tells you

people will let you down, machines won’t. 
On a white-lit afternoon

blinking back the little oil-spills,

you cover your eyes and ears

and are cocooned in the industrious

whir and hammer of an agent

as it reads your mind.

Voices come to you through speakers

as if from a distant blue planet

to a churning vessel

mapping shrouded constellations.

Its artworks are luminous, irrefutable;

the machine is broken.
In the lift a woman peers at you

against reflecting mercury, as if

discerning the features of condemned cargo

hazardous appliance, do not touch

Mirrored back its outlines are slipping, precarious

a specimen studied through cracking glass.
With grinding spokes and chains

you find the shoreline and immerse

let salt seep into its crevices, and wait

for a culmination, an interruption,

deus ex machina. The water crackles on

to its faltering soundtrack

of automated thuds and ticks.

A liner coasts the horizon

all indomitable volume and calibrated steel

it diminishes quietly toward a certain future.