Conjuntos

Parque Santa Lucía
by Daron Larson

1

Guitars and tenors
wearing white, launch corazones
into the spring breeze.

2

A small boy dressed in 
the same shade of vainilla
as his ice cream cone.  

(in)delible

Old Familiar Barbershop, March 13, 2014

(in)delible
by Daron Larson 

A young man with hope
tattooed on his fingers wiped
winter from my boots.

---

See also: @waynexmccloy 

Embodying the Ineffable

Grant Health and Fitness Center, January 28, 2014

VOICE/DATA
by Daron Larson 

An imaginary woman—
a voice that communicates
the impression of female
—invites me to enter my digits

She remains inordinately polite
in word choice and tone
regardless of my ability
to fulfill her desire for my data

I'm sorry
I didn't quite get that

I sense the presence
of a sophisticated algorithm  
calculating the odds of my legitimacy 

I am at her mercy

Please try again 

But she can't know 
I'm assessing her for fraud 
even as I'm being monitored
for virtual trespasses against her

Please stay on the line
Your call is important to us

There is much talk on screens these days
about computer programs evolving
human-like consciousness

Some predict its inevitability
based on laws governing exponential increase

We forget how difficult it remains
for us to accurately convey
the direct experience of loneliness 
     of connection
         of longing
             of grief 
               given the constraints of language

This is not limited to storage bandwidth or process speed
but speaks of the capacity for embodying the ineffable

I'm sorry
Please stay
Please?
You're important to me 
I'm so sorry 

I'm not afraid of the machines
we create in our own image

I'm afraid of our collective overlooking 
of the intangible sparks signaling our humanity

Instincts

Where Will U Go Next?

Instincts
by Daron Larson

There is great comfort
in losing a child
to her own adult life,

naturally, 

and yet —

a little girl is still gone

leaving me to tend
this yearning to nurture
a fragile beginning
toward its gradual

sudden blooming.

Starting Over

Estranged
by Daron Larson

A man about my age recently discovered
he was not kidnapped at birth,
but simply abandoned
and substituted for a wanted boy.

Rolling the genetic dice can
really unravel a personal narrative.

It can free you from injustice
or convince you that you were robbed
of an unwritten version of your life.  

Any autobiography can feel
like an overdoomed library book
while it’s really never more than
a constantly revised draft
that will only be considered
for publication posthumously.

Most of the dialogue is poorly written.
Most of the characters are one dimensional.

It will have to be edited considerably
before the grandchildren will
even bother to skim it,
but not even shared DNA
will be enough to goad them
into slogging through all the mundane details
that are better experienced than described.  

Children live;
adults narrate.

It’s more difficult for adults
to fall in love
with the ordinary play of the senses,
but children yield to it
without hesitation or analysis,

     until we teach them to grow up.

We say that we love resolution,
but we can’t resist returning to the beginning
and starting over.