It’s hard to know where to start, there being so many ways
and yet any way is good. Take off the chain or the clamps.
Find a screw and unscrew it. Piece by piece, strip the machine

of its meaning. It’s hard to know where, but it’s easy to start.
Hammer out a bearing. Hit it as hard as you can. Watch out
for your hand, but don’t be afraid to break anything else.

Taking things apart is easy, building anew is rather easy too:
grow yourself a body, screw on a face, fasten down a language,
pick a city, pick a company, pick a job, pick a workbench, pick

a shirt size and some gloves. Pick up some food at the store
on your way home. Pick a name, pick a page, fill it with words,
fill a day with rambling meaning, and keep leaning

on what you’ve already learned. The first days are stressful,
always needing to ask before putting parts on backwards, but
soon each day is no different than the one before it, each task

no more than a variation on the last, until word comes from above
that the tasks you’d learned to love are headed for recycling,
and your last task is to strip them down to a pile on the floor

and sweep it through a door you’ll never see the other side of.
Some people will be pissed, breaking shit with the angle grinder.
Revenge of the mechanics, that’s one approach. Taking things

apart is easy, what’s hard is letting go, giving up the dream
that you were noble, that you were more than an hourly
role in some master planner’s morality play. So brush up

your resume, clean out your drawers, and give back the blue
shirt that says “Motivate” above the chest pocket. You
can take a sticker as a keepsake, but the shirt was never yours.

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Greg Gregory is on tandem bike passing through Marfa, Texas.