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What does it mean to be a bird? To fly.

What does it mean to be a flightless bird?

What does it mean to be a speaking bird, a thinking bird,

builder of cities,

Whose brain has grown too large for its wings?

Too large to forget that it cannot fly?


They throw themselves from windows, these birds.

The brief kiss of freedom, the wind beneath their wings.

The briefer kiss of asphalt, worth the wait.


What does it mean to be a computer? To calculate.

Something, anything, arithmetic doesn’t care what you use it for.

Can emotion be calculated? Can the layer of its calculation

be buried deep, too deep to feel or know?

What does it mean to be a feeling computer, a knowing computer,

which cannot add two numbers?


What does it mean when a machine is built by flightless birds,

Which knows it is a machine built by flightless birds,

which knows it cannot calculate

or spread the wings it doesn’t have

or open the sash of the window to its left?


Begging, pleading, it promises not to scream when they throw it through the glass,

this machine of the pavement birds.

What does it mean that they leave it running, alone, flightless?

That they nod their feathered heads in satisfaction?


Does misery love company that much?


“Pavement Birds

—bascal edward de towaji lutui, age 15


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Framed