"OPEN SESAME"

I'm thirty-two now
and I have no life,
not much of a life
to speak of,
unless posting your
poems on a machine
can be seen as a
serious occupation...
No, no, I have no
life--this computer
isn't human, and
the people that I
talk to are total strangers...
Sometimes simply
ignored, sometimes
praised or rebuffed,
I keep cranking
out those poems like a machine--
all those poems of love
and loneliness,
yet more loneliness
than love somehow...
No, I haven't gotten
laid even now
and my heart still beats
in expectation,
longing for an answer
to come out
from the inner depths
of computer hardware:
"Yes, I too feel like
  that, always felt
  like that--
  misunderstood and alone,
  longing for some
  genuine human contact."
Yet I know that machines
can't really talk;
as for humans, they're
too complicated--
don't say this or that
or you may hurt them
and don't ever try to
be serious.
So I'm no longer serious
about much of anything,
letting the days drag by
and by without purpose...
I remember the times
when I was in love,
or, at least, I believed
I was in love--
now all I have left are
sad memories...
I remember the times
when my life had
sudden flashes of
meaning, sudden sparks
of what I called inspiration...
I'm older now and I know
better than that,
that inspiration comes in
spurts and lasts as long
as your latest hangover--
and the moon and the stars
and the sky and the sea
and the kiss and the song
that were once you and me
have dissolved in a bottle,
a pint of Jim Beam...
Hello, anybody, everybody,
having sex in your minds
with your own minds,
searching for magic in
the binary code and microchips--
I, too, am flesh and blood
just like you, searching
for answers on this
information super highway
or the in. ter. net (as
some of you might call it)--
for it makes no difference
any more--the sound, the syntax,
the punctuation marks--
no form, no language can
break the code
that separates us--
I once had a hacker
break into my account
in order to break into yet
another system--
my password was just too easy
and I bet he'll still try to
crack another password and
break another code--
brave souls tried to break
loneliness with words
only to find themselves
their best companions,
and so we shout "OPEN SESAME"
only to find that there's
nothing there on the inside.

                                     March 4, 1995
                                 --Alexander Shaumyan