Haibun: Humans Aren't Machines

Like this cactus with these fat little nubby balls, bunched up, they are grouped together like you and I end up. If you think about it, we are endlessly pushed together and categorized all the time: age range, sex, gender, race, religion, etc. Technology and order demand us to be bunched this way. When you or I are handed paperwork or forms to be filled out online, we give details that have no interest in us as who we are, but in what we have and what category we fit into. Raw data is then shipped as fuel to the souless factory of bits. The data mills churn, pound, and clank away, hard as steel, making people into usable data without mercy. We are rejected, “useless,” if we are too far from the norm. No anomalies, no variance, just big data .

Yet, when we arrive back to those we love, there’s a flood of untouchable joy. To make it back, “as me,” is like the first breath after holding my breath all day in the adult world. To feel the soft skin that forms and shapes around me or you and holds us with love, this is bliss. ...And in this garden our bonds grow.


arms bubbling out,
soon long, but now snouts, odd balls.
winter: no mercy

& Haiku: Odd Balls