Sofia Santos | On 12, Oct 2018

There it goes! The machine that tread.

 

Labels carelessly placed and its scratches bruised,

with its unfinished polish, its capacity abused.

Its thin foil shreds have undergone many amends,

with once robust members now of awkward joint bends.

Trudging, creaking, it feigns easy stability.

Its malware’s in beta, yielding some pseudo security.

 

It lurches on, sockets drooping with exhaustion.

For a machine that new, there’s already stress in its gears and organs.

But it perseveres, with shapeless inputs swirled into art,

as its lithe mind register the grand dreams of Michelangelo and Mozart.

Their frail webwork, though it quivers, are vigorous, ardor.

Surging with zaps and knotted wires, one can’t help but admire its lustre.

 

There are innumerable ways to satisfy a database.

Perhaps ease into the arts, with perspective, passion, and paint,

Or learn of dance! Its being a canvas fluid of composition and grace,

Literature, music, machinery; expression exists in all forms and interface.

Its unwavering buzz of copious input sparks ponder;

Oh, how novel the design, yet how poised it wanders.

 

Inevitably, there will be malfunctions. It will leech onto metal scraps, the inner trains of thought,

jarring the screws of meticulous mechanism, gone perhaps too overwrought.

It’ll trigger rust, crooked faults causing anxious perceptions;

A corrupt production of signals due to a minor self-planted seed of hesitation.

And the build shall become still.

Once clouds of pure vibrance now the gases of automobiles.

The inner wires will shrivel and tangle, serving worthless purpose,

as the machine plunges into a binary abyss of glitch and virus.

 

It staggers, and its pipes cough;

it’s so easy to turn a switch off.

 

Alas, the gears will creak. Its step plow through its silliness.

Regaining equanimity within its levers, and start to continue its processes.

A puny puff scoffs out of its top,

as its metal bones and its foil skin adjust and polish off.

 

A hearty creak echoes in the hollow engines,

Reassuring and rich, it’s a steady ascension!

“Left foot, right foot, left…” its programming read,

and there it went on – The machine that tread.