Stephen Van Buren has been writing seriously for the last 30 years, and his work has been published in a variety of magazines and journals. He works as a Reference Librarian at South Dakota State University. This poem first appeared in Empire for the Science Fiction Writer. Dark Planet is designed and edited by Lucy A. Snyder. If you spot any errors, or if you have any comments, please contact her at lusnyde@cyberus.ca. All materials copyright 1996-2001 by their respective creators. No stories, articles, poems or images from this webzine may be posted or published without the written consent of their creator(s).

A Poem For the Wetware: RAM Speed Love by Stephen Van Buren How do I love thee? Let me count the lines -- I love you to the For-Next statements in binary code, as when the disk drive whines uploading each arrayed & poked' bin. I love you to the mother board, & past, as in auxiliary assignment jive; I love you at a 32 bit fast processing speed, with K's bagged in slot 5. My love for you has looped, a BASIC need unentered, transcendental interface beyond the flow-charts where my logic's treed, & networked at a co-processing pace. What ROM-built chips are down in random love? With you my upgrade, RAM files boot above.