29 December 2008

Signals

Originally written in 2003

A traffic light late at night,
red, seems so pale and dim;
it fades into the darkness.
What might seem an angry admonition,
“STOP!” loses its exclamation,
an empty sputtering.
Stop or ignore, it doesn’t matter;
there’s no traffic anyway.
Its power is subsumed,
swallowed in the night.

Green, though—
green is red’s converse in every way.
“Go, go,” it breathes softly,
bathing the car in its seductive glow.
It beckons sotto voce:
forward, accelerate, seek no counsel.
It promises safe passage
without ever quite saying the words,
and if the car wrecks,
well, no one can say the light lied.
A promise written in photons
can’t be counted on.

28 December 2008

Nicotinic Wisdom

26 December 2008

A Life

16 December 2008

Alone

Mail and the Modern Gay World

14 December 2008

Two technological Christmas presents for you

13 December 2008

On the role of experience in making things

11 December 2008

Lost in the blogiverse, coordinates unknown