BREAKING INTO DAWN

I am shifting between seeing and believing.
Standing on this borderland, my body stiffens. Outside,
the sun finishes its lift into the sky while the stars
lay still in the shadows waiting for the next shift to start.

A loud thunder of a slap fills the room of students
and slowly, I am jolted into reality. I see him.
I see him barely amongst the rage. Hands, clenched in air,
move in parallel flight with Henrich’s eyeglasses
and the sound of the boom box.
He is our friend tussling powerlessly against his own inner self.

Unpredictable interactions of 100 billion cells fail him today.
Brain circuitries loosen and buckle against its silent infection.
The one who before has helped us with all the answers;
carefully constructing abstractions with machine language to
skillfully manipulating data into arrays of computing memory.
He now leaves us with only questions.

The clanking of keys in the distant offers momentary relief and
the door latch is unlocked to a sea of guards who comes for him.
His machine is too big for the sky today and his sunrise will not come.
Our lives move on studying Turing’s algorithms but,
now we are aware of our awareness.