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 whaffle 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 just 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…

Dear The Future

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Photo by cottonbro studio on Pexels.com

Dear The Future

Thank you for taking an interest
In my world and my life and times –
Well, not specific’ly mine,
But those around me, and those that shaped me.
Except… you only get to see
A tiny slice of our paradigms –
The few that were preserved,
And yet most likely wholly have escaped me.

The art we leave is the art commissioned
By those with means to commission art –
And overlooks the many times
I’m left to feel so left behind –
Where nobody is saying the things I want to say,
But where to start ?
While all around are images
That in no way represent my mind.

I am a part of my world, in theory,
Yet wield so little influence,
That I sometimes swear I’m an alien visitor,
Stranded on a dead-end street.
But what if every stranger around me
Is thinking the same ?  And yet the sense
That what the Future will take from us
Is simply that of a tiny elite.

I guess that means I’m probab’ly wrong
About the Romans or Tudor-men –
I don’t know bobbins about their likes
And politics and dreams and stuff –
Just because a certain art made money,
For a few years then,
It doesn’t mean it had a lasting impact
Once it lost its fluff.

So thank you, Future, for your int’rest,
But it’s only int’rest in
A few strange costumes from our wardrobe,
Picking apart the hem.
I get it – you study what you can find,
The memories you think we’re dressed-in –
Even though we most-of-us never wore those clothes,
But laughed at them.

The National Fabric

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Photo by Josh Withers on Pexels.com

The National Fabric

Flags are funny things, really –
Waving from the stands,
Or draping over coffins,
Or the jackets of mod bands.

Flags are flown for diplomats,
And flown when armies fight,
And seized-on by protestors,
Tearing-down to set alight.

They’re simple, you see,
And classic designs.
That’s their key –
As branding with bold, bright lines.

They’re loved and hated equally,
As diagnostic style
By the virtue-waving hypocrites
On both sides of the aisle.

Alteration of the Generations

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Photo by AS Photography on Pexels.com

Alteration of the Generations

Flowering plants give birth to their grandkids,
Two generations on.
Between them, a haploid stage in birthed,
And breeds, and dies in a matter of hours.
It’s evolution at play, and history,
Old ways still acting upon –
The hidden generation,
That is lurking deep within the bowers.

The parent cells, barely ten in total,
Died at the point of conception –
But isn’t the same as true in animals ?
Well, yes…and no.
The thing is, they have further stripped their gametes down
To uni-perfection –
No longer build a multicellular form,
They have no need to grow.

But mosses and ferns, they still do it old school –
Separate independent stages –
And algae can even be free-living –
Single, double, single, double…
So botanists have marvelled,
And have filled their textbook pages –
But have drawn the line at animals,
To spare them family trouble.

Yet I suppose there’s one more diff’rence –
If the egg and sperm that made me
Were my parents…well, that means,
My parents are within me to this day –
They gave their lives, and gave their haploid matter
To upgrade me –
So my generation has it easy,
Born with twice the DNA.

Botanists like to point out how the ancestral condition of alternating between haploid (one set of chromosomes) and diploid (two sets) each generation still exists in flowering plants, but in a very reduced form.  And it is true that pollen contains two-to-three cells, and the ovule seven, making them both technically multicellular.

And yet zoologists never seem to mention that the same is true for animals, only here the haploid generation has been reduced even further – now both gametes are single-celled, and their entire mass is consumed by the emergent zygote rather than withering away like all of the haploid plant material bar the two nucleuses.  I guess they’ve got to draw the arbitrary line somewhere…

Snoozeville

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I asked AI for an image of a mundane dream, and this is what it gave me…

Snoozeville

I wouldn’t spend so long a-bed
If my dreams didn’t bore me so –
But I wake-up with a weary head,
As I sense their dullness go.
What trite is my mind assembling
In its gaudy world of fake ?,
That is clear not worth remem’bring,
’Cept for a disappointing ache.

Free-Market Free-Fall

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Interesting that AI has given each flower a shroud…

Free-Market Free-Fall

When I first heard
That we were living
In the throes of
‘Late-stage capitalism’,
Well, I was cheered-up
At the vibes this was giving –
That the end was in sight,
Be it progress or schism.

I mean, just how late
Can a ‘late-stage’ be
Before it collapses
To Marx or to Keynes ?
But no, it seems
That it still staggers free,
Like a zombie economy
Sucking our brains.

And meanwhile, it looks like
The environmental
Cannot hang around
For the axe to come down
And the final blow-out
Will not be gentle,
Salting the earth
And polluting the town.

The cancer is terminal,
Now we all know –
So just topple already,
Accept your fate !
But for most of us,
Still the car crash is slow –
And the late-stage’s ending
Is far too late.

Epic Names

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Thanks AI – any kids this fake-looking must be mythical…

Epic Names

Back when Zeus ruled ancient Greece,
He was the only Zeus around –
No mere mortals dared to name their children
So profound.
At best, they’d add a suffix,
To become an adjective instead –
So Martins are collectively “of Mars”,
And careful how they tread.
We also have Demetrius
To celebrate Demeter –
But not, we note, to claim to be the goddess,
To unseat her.
Now heroes, these were fairer game –
From Jason through to Herekles,
By way of Helen and Cassandra –
Citizens were fine with these…
But it took until the Renaissance
For the coming of Daphne, Phoebe, and Chloe –
And Diana, of course, though she’s Roman, not Greek –
But all were equally showy.
And here in the Twenty-First Century,
Our mythical children thrive –
As Athena, Apollo, Aurora, and Atlas
Are keeping the gods alive !

Perish by the Sword

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The Arrest of Christ, attributed to Grégoire Guérard

Perish by the Sword

Malchus was a servantman
Of Caiaphas the Sadducee,
Who tried to capture Jesus
In a garden at Gethsemane –

But Simon Peter drew his sword
And leapt into a fray,
And before the verse had ended,
Peter smote an ear away.

That ear belonged to Malchus,
On the right side of his battered head,
Though nobody appeared to care
As Malchus simply stood and bled.

And no-one apprehended Peter,
All seemed to ignore –
And Jesus even healed it for him –
(Well, one time in four…)

And once the casual violence
Had fulfilled an ancient prophecy –
The incident was never raised again,
And no apology.

Perhaps there was a metaphor
About ‘too deaf to hear’ ?
But still, the Bible soon forgets
Poor Malchus and his ear…

In-Jokes & Out-Jokes

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Photo by RDNE Stock project on Pexels.com

In-Jokes & Out-Jokes

There’s something fishy going on,
I don’t know what it is,
But it’s going on – some dodgy con,
Some secret funny-biz.
There’s a smirk-and-giggle marathon
That long has lost its fizz.

Someone wants to put one over,
Someone in the know –
But they never let me in on it,
Whatever is their latest bit –
I guess they fear exposure,
When the gaff’s about to blow –
Or they think me far too sober,
And in want of waggish wit.

But there’s something fishy going on,
And I’m the one who’s got.
The denouement must have been and gone,
Though who can say for what ?
Yet if I’m the chump they prey upon,
Their diddly’s full of squat.

So someone wants to crack an egg,
And let a punchline slip –
Or…am I getting paranoid,
Convinced it’s me who’s getting toyed ?
If jokers want to pull my leg,
They need to get a grip –
But if the butt’s no powder keg,
Best grin into the void.

Motorway Dreamer

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Dodge Interceptor by Kevin Bulmer

Motorway Dreamer

That ain’t a Dodge !
What’s a Dodge ?
Something Yankee.
Just trying to bodge with some Hollywood chic.
But this was the Eighties,
Capris and Mercedes –
American cars were all tanks, they weren’t sleek !
For no British kid ever did
Know a Dodge –
And no stodgy old hodgepodge
Could juice-up your toy.
So out with your Rambo,
And give him a Lambo,
For coast-to-coast pure post-apocalypse joy.

The image above is from Fighting Fantasy book 13 – Freeway Fighter (1985).