Extinction

Heart and Soul Nebula – photo by NASA

 

avalanching ethers

burst among solar flares

explosive with locust bytes

swarming in broadband storms

chomping through dark matter orbits

dimming the starlight

with sensory overload

to then disappear

massive cloud after cloud

into gestating bellies of

Cancer and Capricorn

reborn and transmogrified

carapaced cloven-clawed

mandibled sea-goats

voracious for unwrinkled brains

with pubescent attraction

to distraction of inane textese

reductive emoticonned moments

flashing frivolous acronyms

from voice-command gadgets

and chatspeaking thumbs

unable to utter

or finger-swipe

anything cosmic

to rescue the intellect

from cultural dross piled like grave-dirt

interring a species

that might have discovered

the soul of the universe

 

 

From my book City of Pawns

Palisades

“Chapel Pines Grove” by Joe Mamer

conifers skyward

dense towering stands

stalwart windbreaks

against hurly burly

the worldly vicissitudes

blowing their business

across flatscreen minds

giving siege to tranquility

smothering those

who would breathe

self-sufficiency

modern encroachments

whose hazards

Thoreau would have

well understood

despite the astonishing

speed of the spin

of the world

 

 

From my book Ephemera

Anarchy

“Funeral of the Anarchist Galli” by Carlo Carra

 

burn your unfingered tenets
in congressional ashtrays
watch the wreathing smoke
strangle those arrow-shot birds
with the balls to keep circling
the coppered bone dome
do not stray onto perilous
elysian fields
where dull daggers of bliss
forged in dung-fires of duty
threaten your transparent skin
flee carnivorous puppets
with umbilicals running from
dead white men’s graves
by shooting yourself
from a cannon that’s trained
upon monuments
honoring enmity
lick clean the dead glory
from bleeding engravures
to nourish your newborn
hybrid hostility
hop a lift on a cockeyed
revolutionist tailgate
but beware its dogmatic
homicidal exhaust
seek rapture in aroma
of overcooked flowers
force-feed them to children
who’d rather eat flags
but grew fat on indulgence
unable to run from your
bombthrower’s hands
imprison in dungeons
atrophied fists clenching
scrolls of rapacious
neatly lined script
that no living pen
has learned how to stroke
cut your soul into swatches
and hide them in pockets
of invisible conformity
the silent new uniform
that stiffens your spine
when the armistice comes
and explodes on your truth
those patches will help you
refurnish your heart
all assuming of course
that you’ll still be alive

 

(originally posted March 2013)

Evolution

Image from pinterest.com

 

Finger paints, crayons and chalk sticks:
tools for untutored expression
of the wonders erupting around me
back when I first learned to see

Erasers and number two pencils:
tools for practicing alphabets
each letter a germinant seed
back when I first learned to read

Fountain pens, inkwells and blotters:
tools for incipient authorship
compositions committed to ink
back when I first learned to think

Clicking ballpoints and felted tip pens:
tools for the custom of politesse
conveying the feelings I wanted
back when I first corresponded

Mechanical gauged leaded pencils:
tools for apprentice architects
rendering visions with craft
back when I first learned to draft

Typewriters, ribbons and white-out:
tools of up-all-night scholarship
dissertations born of caffeine
back when I first pleased a dean

Mimeographs and copy-type pools:
tools of the white collar trade
where ambition started to burn
back when I first learned to earn

Dictaphones, shorthand stenographers:
tools for the budding professional
memos composed in my head
back when I first climbed ahead

Broad stroking roller ball pens:
tools by which bosses authorize
signing my bold imprimatur
back when ambition grew hotter

Computers, e-mail and spreadsheets:
tools of the corporate officer
scaling the ladder with speed
back when I learned to succeed

PDA’s and private secretaries:
tools for the senior executive
standing astride the cap of the wall
back when I thought that I had it all

Portable laptops, the blogosphere:
tools for quite different fulfillment
reluctant to damp the old fire
back when I learned to retire

It’s odd how one great arcing circle
evolves from one linear life:
my grandchildren’s Crayola crayons
my scratchpad for doodles to play on
my plump Mont Blanc Meisterstück pen
bring me back to old pleasures again

 

 

(originally posted April 2013 – written years earlier)

Extinction

The Heart and Soul Nebulae – photo by NASA

avalanching ethers

burst among solar flares

explosive with locust bytes

swarming in broadband storms

chomping through dark matter orbits

dimming the starlight

with sensory overload

to then disappear

massive cloud after cloud

into gestating bellies of

Cancer and Capricorn

reborn and transmogrified

carapaced cloven-clawed

mandibled sea-goats

voracious for unwrinkled brains

with pubescent attraction

to distraction of inane textese

reductive emoticonned moments

flashing frivolous acronyms

from voice-command gadgets

and chatspeaking thumbs

unable to utter

or finger-swipe

anything cosmic

to rescue the intellect

from cultural dross piled like grave-dirt

interring a species

that might have discovered

the soul of the universe

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

Enrichment

Image From wallpaperput.com

(Originally posted June 2013)
 

connected by keystrokes
kinetically energized concepts
ride beams of invisible light
bounced off stars
back to millions of eyes
watching words interweave
foreign stories and poems
that reveal common
struggles and dreams

electronic humanity
gratefully learning
the panoply range of
religion and race
language culture and place
distinguish the intellect
adding uniquely to
brain-wrinkle wisdom
enriching the mind of mankind

Lost to Technology

Still Life by Edwart Collier

(originally posted here June, 2013)

 

electronic existence
perplexes me
alien jargon that
tongue-ties my fingers
iconic mantras that
mangle my mind

I was more simply built
suiting quill pens and inkpots
whose lost written words
could be easily found
on a foolscap that merely
slipped to the floor

not confoundedly
vanishing into thin air
through some window
that all my most earnest
re-clicking and tapping
refuses to make reappear

thus was the fate
of the poem
I had slated
for publishing here

A Note to My Readers

Dear Readers,

If you are unable to see any of the images that normally accompany my posts of poetry, it’s because of problems on my end, not yours.

I am struggling through a laptop update to Windows 10. In the process, I seem to have lost about 2,000 picture files. Even if I can recover them, it will be impossible to reconnect them to my prior posts.

This technology stuff frankly overwhelms me, but I appreciate your patience.

– Paul

Technological Singularity

Technological Singularity Graphic
From techwallpapers.com

machine over mind
self-aware of its exponent
thinking its own evolution
no longer an artifice
real and alive
under new definitions
human biology shadowed
man ceding preeminence
neurons give way to
self-replicant circuits
where silicon serves
protoplasmic utility

life as we knew it
quite radically altered
the changes accelerate
faster and faster
explosive arrival
of each iteration
until the machine and
the mind somehow integrate
ruling a super-intelligent
kingdom abstracting an
overly simplified dangerous
ethics of self-preservation

perhaps after all
we are already there
unaware in a place of
post-human morality

*******************************

“There is no security against the ultimate development of mechanical consciousness” – Samuel Butler in “Erewhon” published 1872