Let me fix you within my mechanical eye -
Turn you like a jewel beneath the
Examiner’s glass.
Let me find fault and pick at perfection:
Let me draw a red line to
Separate both hell and heaven.
Let me twist and turn you this way and that;
Let me bounce up and down on your
Hundred dollar hat.
Let me pull back the flesh
To see the workings within.
Let me prove to the world how
The pickings need not be so slim.
Let the fool and the thief gather
At the electronic gate -
They are herding all the sheep
Born to comply with the fear and all the hate.
Let us not think of how the
Manufactured breaks but doesn’t die:
Oh! Let me fix you with my
Mechanical android eye.
I observe but cannot hear
All that jazz and all that song,
I turn my head away from
The eternal longing -
That soulful ebb and flow that
Goes on and on and on.
Vox Humana offends me,
Imprecision irritates;
The mechanical has no intention
Of playing with human give or take.
There is a certain truth that can only
Be seen when you peer within at
The fragile workings of
This clockwork peddler that
Runs erratically on unleavened bread and
80 percent proof bootleg bathtub gin.
If you pull a hole in the fabric
Of this outward crust of reality
The machinery of the universe
Is all yours to examine and see.
It pulls along its shattered way
It chugs along just fine.
The wheels are greased with suffering:
This bad knowledge is soothed by wine.
The cogs are pulled by animal desires
That are wound ever higher and tighter;
There is a lever that sits in the heart of the brain,
As useless as a phony Hollywood gun for hire.
It is weighed down by rebellion
It feeds on hunger, thirst and shame.
The switches are insensitive to all but
The most ardent players of the game.
The gears work well enough to slow
Down the artists and the dreamers.
The pistons keep on running
Fast enough to power even the most ardent of schemers.
It is all fueled by the batteries of an ancient age.
It sure seems like a lot of effort just to make
The hand turn on both the clock and page.
I am the partial luddite with the mechanical eye,
I have machine gun sensibilities,
I have ceased to be able to cry.
I cruise the newspaper comments
Every day at 4pm on the dot.
It produces all the anger I need
To make my machine run red hot.
Let me drop a nail into its smooth runnings:
Let me dare to hear the Earth’s singsong
Rotational hummings.
Let me deny the joints oil and grease;
Let me worry at the pins
That keep all this ticking on underneath.
Let me shake some soul into the logic.
Let me fire up the memory of how we
All collectively forgot it.
Let me put a spark into the brain
Let me make what has always been iced over
Into something warm, and rich and
Deliciously insane.
Let me fix you within my mechanical eye:
The blood is thin, the senses fried,
Must I pluck out what offends me
Now that the machines are
On the rise?
