Invention

 

“Machine Abstract” by Mi9

 

 

 

my dandy green engine
just sputtered and coughed
till I gave it a kick and
it licked into stride with
a great cosmic thrum as
it sucked in the carbon
emissions that hung from
the atmosphere cleansing
the blue like an art
restoration recaptures the
painter’s own light but
the off-switch just wouldn’t
respond and it sucked
down the sky with a whoosh
and then gurgled while
pulling the sea from its beds
next the cities went clattering
into its maw and I kicked
it and whacked it to no
real avail as I watched every
landscape and mountain
get swallowed an instant
ahead of the sun moon
and stars so with no love
of loneliness I had no choice
but to tuck in my chin and
dive into my beast leaving
then and forever an old
planet newly made clean and
pristine cold and dark with
one dandy machine that again
seized with sputter and cough

 

 

(originally posted December 2013)

One Man Renaissance

 

Leonardo Da Vinci – Self-Portrait

(Originally posted June 2013)
 

 

bastard prodigy
inhaled practical genius
from medieval airstreams
fulsome with hardship
and history blown
from far corners
of violent worlds
across fallow Tuscany
stirring the intrigues
seething in Florence

precocious esthesia
charged candlelit studios
in tour de force thrall
to Medici patronage
painted and sculpted
invented machines
designed revolutions
of science and art
engineered his modernity
prefigured our future

Steampunk

“Steampunk Clock”
Painting by Luis Cruz
From art.ekstrax.com

the automaton
sleeps in a leather valise
aboard coal fired
wagon-lits exiting
Paris for Zurich
where Boole
surreptitiously waits
in the garish
pooled gaslight
that puddles his
well disguised lab

grown impatient
with checking
rechecking
his bold philosophical
specs for the final
adjustments
the strokes
that will transform
intelligent worlds with
a lifelike machine-driven
self-thinking man

as the nearing train
mounts chugging groaning
steep Swiss elevations
he opens his pocket-fobbed
quantum clock geared
for the measure of logic
and smiles with a
mathematic knowledge
that soon will arrive
his inchoate invention
prepared to receive
its mechanical mind

what the future will hold
will be told
by new means
of computing
the physics and abstracts
that ever have challenged
organic gray brains
told by gleaming gold
ratchets and pistons
of new jewelried genius

the clatter of horsecarts
on cobblestoned lanes
makes his waiting
unbearable watching
from under the
ancient hewn eaves
of his retrofit garret
he finally spies
his reliable teamster
and rushes to take hold
the precious valise
wildly eager to usher
the Boolean offspring
of what will have been
the industrial age