My Hands

My hands:

(what is beyond the commands?)

i am a small person
in a small place
here at work,
a dead body in a chair.

not part of what real people
are doing beyond my desk
i'm typing what you tell me
on the keyboard you gave me
because that is what you taught me
to do.

there are no windows.
no birds fly by. there is no wind
save stale breath.
my freedom only a thinking space
between the keyboard and i.

beyond these walls
i am told there are dreams
in a blinding drift
i could never climb,
i could never experience.

my hands type the commands
you taught me.
but it is not my hands.
it is a rivulet
of the common conscience
on a commonplace stick.

i can’t do this
out of human nature
because i am asked
to exceed human nature
in doing it.

i am an unnatural seed
in this dead-root chair.
my roots are still young
and barely under the surface.

Mark David Jordan, 2011