Plead the Ninth

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I asked AI for moral guidance, and this is what it told me…

Plead the Ninth

What’s Commandment number Nine ?
The answer can be most revealing
Of the teller’s own Divine –

“Thou shalt not bear false thy witness.”
Here, I get the strongest feeling
Of some Southern Baptist business.

“Covet not thy neighbour’s wife.”
And here, the penitent who’s kneeling
Is a Cath’lic, on my life.

“Do not covet thy neighbour’s house.”
Now here, there’s sev’ral choices wheeling,
But Orthodox would be my nouse.

“Um…is that the ‘do not steal’ one ?”
While here, their dithering and reeling
Shows them for an Anglican.

“Bring the first fruits to thy Lord.”
And here, I’d wager that we’re dealing
With a Heathen making sport.

You Are The Hero !

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Detail from the original slipcase for Steve Jackson’s Sourcery ! by John Blanche

You Are The Hero !

Remember all those gamebooks from back when we were boys ?
(And girls…though mainly boys.)
Remember how, on tenterhooks,
We’d have to make the choice
Of our turning left or turning right ?
Remember all the monsters and the ploys that we would fight ?
Remember all the dice we’d roll
To see if we would kill the troll ?
And prove our might ?
Remember all the traps upon the roads ?
And treasures that we’d prize ?
Remember finding clues and secret codes
If we chose wise ?
Remember flipping through the pages
On our quest to smash the mages ?
Turning to the paragraph with bated breath –
Would we find the one true path,
Or would we meet with death ?

Well, both, of course.
Ev’rybody cheated,
And nobody rolled dice.
(Not even would the girls obey.)
For nobody could force us how to play.
Whenever we would be defeated,
We would not think twice,
But just shrug and carry-on along our way.
We wouldn’t sigh when we were slain,
And start from chapter one again,
As laid down by the authors of these epic Middle Ages –
Instead, we’d keep our fingers in the pages,
Testing out each turn –
To see which would reward and which would burn.
And we were right to cheat so blatantly
When said and done –
For all the boys (and girls) agree
That gaming should be fun…

Ah, the good old five-fingered bookmark ! But they weren’t all fantasies…

All The Letters I Can Write

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Emily Dickinson by Wesley Merritt

All The Letters I Can Write

Emily, Emily, scribing all day,
And so many poems, so much range !
Seventeen-hundred-odd and change.
Emily Dickinson, come what may –
With rhymes that fade in the second-half,
For over a dozen-by-gross of graft.
Sure, they’re short, what you have to say –
Though I prefer ‘pithy’, by the way-
But you tell it so often, all it’s worth,
So don’t mind the length and feel the girth !
One-and-three-quarter thousand, that’s the score.
And finally, I’ve bettered and more !
I’ve blasted past, as I chase two kay,
With the short, and the long, and the inbetween,
There’s something for ev’ryone to ignore !
And sure, they’ve never been published or seen –
So just like yours, and look at yours now !
For you are my hope, my dream, my vow –
To keep on writing anyhow…
Emily, Emily, never in drought,
In your study, your sanctum, your safe redoubt,
Where you homespun ev’ry lyric and lay –
In ev’ry sense, you’re here to stay.
So, two grand of verses ?  I’m in with a shout,
While shut in my garret, not going out…

The Age of Discretion

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Photo by Dan Cristian Pu0103dureu021b on Pexels.com

The Age of Discretion

I’ve learned when to stand in the spotlight,
And I’ve learned when to soften my tone.
I’ve learned when to keep my lips shut tight,
And smile until it all comes right,
Because I’ve learned when not to fight,
But to leave all well alone.

I knew what I was doing, of course,
I’ve no excuse, and ask for none.
It only serves to reinforce
Precisely what I’ve done.

I’ve learned when not to speak my mind,
And I’ve learned not to gossip or moan.
I’ve leaned when silence can be kind,
To notice all yet still be blind –
Yet no surpise, at last I find
That I’ve ended up alone.

I knew what I was playing, back then,
And chose to play it solitaire.
And now that I have lost my men,
I’ve nothing left to share.

The Home of the Angels

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Photo by Anastasiya Badun on Pexels.com

The Home of the Angels

I’ve heard there’s a sign in the West on a hillside –
That leads to a jolly good land –
Where the Sun always shines on its name in lights,
On boulevards blond and tanned.
I’ve heard there’s a town where they rebuild the cities,
Where the stories are stacked so tall –
Then they pull them all down in a couple of nights,
And we’re left to imagine them all.

I’ve heard there’s a wide road that looks to the sunset,
And lets it all go to its head –
Where ev’ry abode is chock-full of dreams,
But there’s only so many beds.
I’ve heard there’s a sidewalk that shakes our hand,
And the backlots are guarded by beasts –
And it’s true, all the talk, how the whole town gleams,
When it’s seen from a distance, at least…

Cranial Strainial

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Photo by Amel Uzunovic on Pexels.com

Cranial Strainial

I was paging through the vellum of my silly cerebellum,
In pursuit of some astute and cutesy cue –
I was patterning some patter from the matted-old grey matter,
But my gloomy ruminations would not glue.
I was brooding on a doodle from my stewed and moody noodle,
But although my lights were on, my wits were dim.
I was knocking on my noggin for a logarithmic login,
But my lingo wasn’t bingo-ing with vim.
Thus I tried to work the quarry of my murky upper-storey,
But the nuggets were a slug of IOUs –
So I hoped my troubleshooter would reboot my meat-computer,
But my scrutinising loosened only screws.
And for all I poked and probed at my affront to frontal lobes,
I was summoning no summit for my sums –
All my neurons were neurotic, and my id was idiotic,
And my egghead wasn’t laying golden plums.

Onion Friends

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Photo by MART PRODUCTION on Pexels.com

Onion Friends

Friends are funny things really…
I’m mean, I must know a couple of hundred or more
On nodding terms,
And half of those I even know their names,
And out of them, I’ve had a decent chat this year
With two-or-three score,
(Which is not something I get to say
With some of my former flames…)
But out of that group, there’s roughly half
With whom I can share a joke,
And barely a dozen I’d ever consider ‘close’
And as for ‘best’, well, those are the rarest
Among my friendly folk,
Though all are worth the knowing,
To the degree that we engross.

Parallel Paragraphs

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Photo by Jimmy Chan on Pexels.com

Parallel Paragraphs

Don’t just write what you know,
But let your words off the lead in the wood –
To run and bark where the nettles grow,
In a left-hand neighbourhood.
Use your writing as reason to read,
To shake up the status quo –
Sometimes the blank page plants a seed
To write what you want to know.

Aero-Bats

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Photo by HitchHike on Pexels.com

        Aero-Bats

Why can bats fly ?
And I don’t mean at all,
I mean still ?
Why have they never gone ostrich or penguin,
But never stopped flapping, so upwards-ascending,
Refusing to temper their skill ?
There’s plenty on islands without all the predators,
Plenty of time for their genes to face editors,
Yet, to their credit, their urge to grow lazy is nil.
Though perhaps that’s unfair on the dodos and fleas,
Who have repurposed bodies to new strategies –
So their airborne commitment to natural fitment,
Is not simply down to sheer will.
The pterosaurs never turned flightless either,
At least from the fossils we’ve found –
It seems that neither stuck to the ground.
I wonder if it’s all down to their puny legs,
Unlike the biped birds,
That stops them forming roaming herds,
Or burrowing into the hill ?
The membranes, though, of their wings attach
To their nether-limbs – is maybe a catch
To developing muscles down there with a kick ?
They just aren’t quick enough for the kill.
Though evolution is ever the tweaker –
The pika-pika can forage and scramble
With hardly a gamble or grounding or snafu –
While vampire bats, they can even run if they have to !,
Yet flying remains their thrill.
I guess it continues to work well enough,
So I guess they continue with flying and stuff,
And we all have our niches to fill.

I Before E

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I fed AI this poem as a prompt, and, well…

I Before E

“I before E, except after C,
When the sound you are making is ee.”

19th Century proverb

Well, yes, there are exceptions,
But not nearly often as they claim –
Can we look at some ?
Well, sure, I’m game.

No, not science, that’s bogus and you know it –
Do I really have to show it ?
Look – the I and E are each in a sep’rate syllable.

And no, not eight, nor beige, nor vein –
I surely should not need to explain –
You’ll have to do better to prove that it’s a silly rule.

And no, not foreign, nor ancient, nor surfeit –
Pronunciation-shifts short-circuit,
Their violation will not outlive you –

I guess there is keister and casein and teiid,
Yet when was the last time that those words were needed ?
So much waffle we have to sieve through…

But caffein, and Keith, and seize, I’ll give you.

But heifer and leisure, they don’t disobey it,
While neither and sheikh, it depends how you say it,
And feisty, and height, and Reich dodge the label,
While theirs are so weird, with their Rs unstable,
And suffixes don’t count – your swingeings are fallacies –
You won’t find your gotcha in all these banalities –

But buddleia, species, and Eid ?   Yeah, those are fatalities…