A new poem - Failing a Turing Test

In honour of the victims who died in Orlando, the survivors and their families and every queer person on the planet.

Failing a Turing Test

We water a tree of hate with fifty three dead,

wring hands, refuse to state the obvious,

as if queerness were catching, as if picking

a path through bodies, as if we can’t

acknowledge:  a seed of hate is nurtured

in every heart each time we refuse

to say this was a gay hate crime.

A hate with long roots that blooms

in bruises and roses of torn flesh,

in the suicide of a savior of a million lives -

If this is intelligent human behavior

grant me the machine paradise.