Poetry. Ever have a line from a song stick in your head? What happens when you let it take off on its own? The product of many two-hour late- night commutes, MACHINES WE HAVE BUILT yields the poetic detritus left after a full day, when the need to stay awake and the longing to get home are paramount. Each prose poem in MACHINES WE HAVE BUILT is a riff into what occurs when language is allowed to devour itself and where metaphor splices into metaphor, forming a domain where literal language becomes entirely figurative, where fashioning these language constructs simultaneously frees and imprisons us, making us both forget--and be all too aware--that the mind is a device that builds and destroys what we call real.