Brandon Amico

My iPod Has Some Questions

"Are You a Hypnotist?"
No.
I am just deceptively honest.

"Where is My Mind?"
Left somewhere between
the sunset and a diner window
in the Midwest plains, the near-
blank canvas that shook
with postmodern art. Check
the grout between bathroom
tiles that breathes exhaled liquor
and the filaments from light bulbs
that just won't seem to die.

"Are Friends Electric?"
I could point with a snide,
practiced finger towards
social media,
to a whole world of internet-bred
Xbox LIVE-fed relationships and faces
shaped like voices. But instead, I will point out
that our brains function on electricity
and words from friends
visit me as if having slid their slippers
across the carpet before touching the knob.

"Blue Cadet-3, Do You Connect?"
If connecting to this world
means that noise electronics make
when powered down, but still plugged in,
humming their anti-Om,
tell the other two cadets
I will meet them on the ocean floor.

"Have You Ever Seen the Rain?"
Once. Usually it moves so fast
I can't truly see it, I am simply
aware of its existence.
One day I went to speak with that rain.
I stood in its presence.
Every time I finished introducing myself,
I would find a new group of droplets before me,
and had to start fresh.
Over and over I did this, until I was soaked.
This was not as frustrating as it sounds;
it's not often you can actually see
the metaphor dripping from your body.

"Why?"
(Sigh.) Because of
the government/your parents/bad
luck/the sun's relative position to
whatever star you decided looked
at you funny.

"If I Ever Leave this World Alive"
Not really a question, iPod,
but I'll play along.
What I would do
is travel through my past
and swallow every moment recorded
in flesh or letter. I will step over the flimsy
partition labeled "existence"
into the vacuum of space,
open my mouth like a door
and purge everything. History will cling
to itself, every atom huddled in the cold
of the void, forming a new planet.
I will make stars of the light
from eye projectors built by faces
in the theatres of memory.
With them watching,
I will walk an orbit, and as I stand
on the divide of dark and dawn
where the sun curls its fingers
around the globe, I will await
the sound
of creation.