Luis Morales-Navarro (莫路) is a writer/coder interested in natural language processing, computational literature, networked physical computing, poetry and speculative fiction. Currently he is a Resident Research Fellow at New York University Shanghai.

 

Nongfu Spring

Clusters of dust blossom with the winter

In my body there are kegs of Chinese beer

I inhale blue-white air

Walls drip sweat and all I want is water

The bottle a place in darkness

The forest trail

The wide bridge flowing with the currents

and the end of wilderness,

craving juices, gazing at plums that quench thirst

Springs melted from snow and ice on top of the

mountain converge underground,

moving along holes and cracks in the basalt

There are many aged boats

The spring adjusts the seasons with the wind of her soul

It dissolves silicon dioxide in surrounding rocks to form

silicate-type mineral water with low sodium

from beneath the volcanic basalt surface

purified through the rock stratum before gushing out from below

suitable for long term consumption

Clouds poured into her mouth

become words walking her gardens

Two drops on a leave laugh as if sharing an inside joke

all this came to pass with us

money plants creep in through the water

Unintelligible characters swim

Flowers are born, beautiful people surrounded by water

I ask Feng Xiaoyang about the Nongfu Spring

He says it doesn’t exist

 

~

Cuaderno Verde

for Claudia Mejía

 

Demonstrate your understanding in 511

a conversation with Borges

a petition from an old severe peasant

 

—after surfing for three years— in Nanjing

the emperor receives the patriarch of Hindustan

these happenings and these beings are momentaneous

 

their mansions raided corporal punishment

too feeble to talk playing decent go pre-dream

brought to the house confiscated poetry

 

on the road in particular, the datalogs

flake across the desk if one person committed a crime

revise the law if the household had seniors or children

 

—full of nihilism— the Bodhidharma:

I don’t know who I am. who is it?

three pounds of lino. the letter kills.

 

~

Wéixīn Man

I dreamed I was a profile. When I woke up I ignored

if I had a dream where I was a profile or

if I was a profile dreaming of being me

It all started when we looked at each other

with a special tactile chemistry

 

When the world crashes on my hand

other people and I are of the same womb

made me what I am

we are just good friends

I’m a wéixīn man

 

And we are still good friends

software for the purpose of finding you

wéixīn man with character amnesia

use it only as a backup

that its sorry was dancing

I close my eyes and there you are

 

When my hand laughs

I’m a wéixīn man, and I’m gonna say

You know the way it is

watching every glyph

content not for sale

 

“At thirty a man stands”

giving the right to use his content

with no fees or charges payable to him by them

export it everywhere in the world

Another wéixīn man

By its grace i am new man

And my song is filled with joy

Of its image I am a reflection

 

“At forty a man is no longer puzzled”

under rocks and a thousand places

in order to comply with applicable laws or regulations

his data may have already been disclosed

pack it in a crate and ship it off

because autocomplete software

 

A gust rises I’m a wéixīn man

With predictive text from the 1950s conquering my words

But we are still friends. The software studies my habits

And my answer sounds like me with character amnesia

like me at my most generic