Robot/Poet

A factory robot
living under the nail
of my right index finger,

that’s what that itch is, 
that mechanical call
to work on a poem for the sake
of automation, for the sake
of output, for the sake of 
stage time.

One of those
Fifties movie robots alive and 
spring-armed in the center
of my chest,

that’s what 
this desire to be a poet is, 
a longing with clumsy brilliance,
stymied sometimes into silence
when it neither understands
human emotion nor gives it room.

The robots of my poetry are failing — 

what’s the only thing you have left
when the factory robot in your hand shuts down
the assembly line and insists on retooling,
when the movie robot in your chest admits
it’s a short guy in a clumsy costume?

I don’t know what you call that, or me.

I seem to know a thing or two,
can get meals and drive and function
without thinking of poetry.
Seems happy, uninterested
in robots or drive or prosody or
even ambition.  

I don’t know this well enough
to think much of it.
When no one is looking or listening,
I stare at it as if we were not the same body.

I have caught it rhyming, smiling, 
tapping a rhythm while listening to
neighbors speaking, laughing.
I can’t hear gears or hydraulics
in anything it says.  
Is anything in here still a poet?