Genji

A boy asks his father for a Cyr wheel. The father says no. Eight hundred dollars, too dangerous, you’ll hurt yourself.

The boy shows him a YouTube video. The father watches a man spin inside an aluminum ring. He agrees to pay half.

What follows is a broken nose, a platform built six inches out of level, a string of LEDs, an Arduino, a suit sewn at the kitchen table, arguments about section three, and a mother who never stops saying “wear a helmet.”

These poems are about watching someone you love refuse to quit.

Thomas Jay Rush is a software engineer and writer. He’s spent more than forty years building software, from early database systems to blockchain infrastructure.

Rush holds a mathematics degree from Temple University, an MS in Computer Science from University of Pennsylvania, and an MFA in Poetry from Rosemont College. Rush has been writing about technology since the days of 8K floppy discs.

He lives with his wife in near-perfect harmony. You can find TrueBlocks at trueblocks.io and his personal writings at stonylanepress.com.