These Are Dark Times For Robots

Summer 2015, Uncategorized

by Cara Yacino

 

Victor Habbick Visions / Science Photo Library / universal Images Group

Victor Habbick Visions / Science Photo Library / universal Images Group

I was born into an iron world
assembled in the winter of ’93 and proudly
Made In America.
My wind-up heart has more horsepower than a Mustang
and it’s twice as reliable.

I’m not the only one.
At any given moment there are seven billion
glazed glass eyes and stretched iron smiles
on any given street–
manufactured sleepwalkers.

We pretend we’re flesh.
“Social justice” “Family values” “Empowerment”
prevent mass mechanical malfunction and
distract us from the rust.

We tell our iron children stories of the past
a distant time when human meant more
and upgrades meant less
as we bask in a monitor’s pale blue glow.

Hearts have fragile gears and many cogs
that whirr and spin and sometimes
jam.
We search for thrills
yet we fear the junkyard.

Yesterday,
I slipped on a patch of ice
that my ocular module missed.
Wires frayed and sparked under silicone skin
and there it was, a drop of red.

Sometimes I wonder who wired my circuits.
I was born into an iron world
without an iron care to give
and yet I bleed.

 

 

Photo credit: Humanoid robot, artwork. Encyclopædia Britannica ImageQuest. Retrieved 17 Jun 2015, from

http://quest.eb.com/search/132_1212265/1/132_1212265/cite