Genius Steals
For ev’ry luddite, rag, and hater,
Claiming larceny,
Insisting that the end is nigh
When silicon can scrape and pry –
If AI lives on stolen data,
Well, then so do we –
For ev’ry thing we’ve ever seen
Has fed our influence machine.
We’re not so special, not so innocent,
Are you and me –
We take in other people’s art
And pull it, piece-by-piece, apart,
Then mix it up until it’s good-and-bent,
And ours for free,
And never pay back what we earn
From folks who stole it in their turn.
Cherubs
Once we were giants,
With four huge wings to roar with grace.
Once we were monsters,
With four strange wheels, on each a face.
Once we were angels,
Guarding the Garden with swords of flame.
Once we were the Cherubim –
And all would marvel at our name.
So how did we become the Putti?
Chubby toddlers on a lark?
Popping-up in architraves,
When once we sat atop the Ark.
Artists’ lackeys, cute and naked,
With the stubbiest of wings.
To think, we once were Yahweh’s soldiers –
Now we’re puny, Pagan things…
I don’t think you need me to tell you this is AI…
Bats in the Belfry
The bats take refuge in the church,
Between the hammerbeams –
They fly-in through a gargoyle’s open maw,
Or so it seems.
And congregants have learned which pews
They oughtn’t occupy,
As droppings live upto their name,
Like manna from on high.
The organ doesn’t bother them,
They sleep right through the hymns,
And no reading out of Revelations
Makes them stretch their limbs,
Though we sometimes hear them squeaking
As we finish evensong –
Leviticus may curse them,
But they feel like they belong.
Holy Cow
Is the Brazen Bull on Wall Street
Just another Golden Calf ?
Well, so what ? Don’t we have the right
To choose on our behalf
If we worship God or Mammon
In a land where freedom’s cheered,
Without three thousand slaughtered
By a zealot in a beard ?
Me, I worship nobody,
And laugh at those who do,
But I must admit they have the right
To follow gods that moo.
As long as no-one forces me
Within the public square –
But if pressed, I guess I’d grudgingly
Affirm a Rusty Bear…
Day 28 – Trophy – #inktober #inktoberpoem #inktoberpoetry
Pans & Panic
1.
If the sound of distant clatter
From the kitchen shakes you from your bed,
If the smell of bubbling pancake batter
Makes you fear the bread,
Or if the chirpy chatter
Of a TV chef fills you with dread,
Then shriek or slink, it doesn’t matter,
But just scatter to the shed….
2.
If the sound of critics pishing,
Tutting, and poo-pooing, taking aim,
Or sneering as they’re strutting, swishing,
Choosing who to raise to fame,
Just sucks you of ambition,
That you’ll never beat them at their game –
Then don’t wait from the first edition,
Join a mission, change your name…
3.
If you hear a distant cry
From the skirl of his pipes in piercing shrills,
If you hear his hooves come trotting by,
Or his bleating, braying trills,
If you glance his wool-caked thigh,
Or horns still bloody from his kills –
Then pant and scream that the end is nigh,
And run high for the hills…
Day 7 – Panic – #inktober #inktoberpoem #inktoberpoetry
Badland Barons
Spaghetti Westerns filmed in Spain –
Was that because the cactus got there first ?
Invading through the dry terrain,
And perfect with some charros interspersed…
Alas, the only ones we see
Are squat and unromantic prickly pears –
Saguaros need a century
To even grow those cowboy arms of theirs.
Instead, they had to turn to fakes
For long-shots standing-in as Arizona –
Moving flats between the takes
To look more Tucson, look less Barcelona…
Were there not native spurges
That could act the part as extras on the set ?
Although, what now emerges
Is a weird, invasive hybrid – better yet !
Day 4 – Cactus – #inktober #inktoberpoem #inktoberpoetry
Miniatures
Model railways run in circles,
Through the days of steam,
All cobbled-streets and Northern quirk-ful,
In a Thirties dream –
A spotless, frozen neighbourhood,
Bedecked with tiny trees,
And terraces of balsa-wood,
And cardboard factories.
This world had vanished long before
These modellers were born,
But here, in H-O scale once more,
It’s elegantly worn.
They never show the modern world,
It seems – no urban sprawl.
Perhaps they take so long to build,
It sets their sights so small…?
Day 3 – Miniature – #inktober #inktoberpoem #inktoberpoetry
Frame-Fillers
What makes Mona Lisa smile ?
Well, some say it’s the genius
Of Leonardo’s toils –
That undefining dreaminess,
That soul bared free, that hallowed style,
Not me –
No, I say it’s the pigments in his oils
That manifests his guile.
And now that she’s been painted, see,
She’s micrometre points-of-colour –
Sometimes brighter, sometimes duller –
Quantified by RGB,
And shared by log and file.
Leonardo’s canvas is just that,
And not some holy relic –
Just a poplar panel, nothing more.
What matters is no artefact,
And art critics aren’t clerics,
And a gallery is not a sacred store,
With treasures by the pile.
No – it’s the image, not the paint,
That we must cherish like a saint,
And never leave to perish –
But the board is just wooden tile.
And though there’s some may be indignant,
We can print with oil and pigment
Perfect copies, big and small –
Let’s have a thousand-Lisa free-for-all !
I’d say she’s worth the while…
Her beauty should be on the move,
Beyond the Louvre, to ev’ry wall –
So anyone can recreate her smile.
Day 2 – Relic – #inktober #inktoberpoem #inktoberpoetry
Grounds for Divorce
Highbury Stadium – once was the time
When the very mention meant Arsenal.
But you threw that away for some sponsor or other,
Your history’s turned to a farce, pal.
And White Hart Lane has hardly fared better,
And Goodison fell by the way –
Where next ? Old Trafford or Stamford Bridge,
Where memories no longer play ?
I get it, you needed to move, to expand –
And you don’t give a fig for the past.
You’d even let wither the name of the club
For a chequebook sufficiently vast.
Yet imagine Milan, but without the San Siro,
Or Barça decamped from the Nou.
And imagine your shiny new ground with an old name,
To carry your heritage through.
Home Kits
There’s far too many teams in red,
(And those that aren’t are blue instead) –
With some in stripes, a hoop or two,
Between the red (or else the blue).
And some are claret, some are sky –
But few will use a diff’rent dye.
So we look ourselves at home –
Yet on the road, we shed our skin.
And the fans will wear our latest polychrome
With a loyal grin –
Any colour, just so long we win.
But here and there, a yellow lurks,
Or gleaming white, which also works,
Or sometimes green, or sometimes gold,
(Or even pink, if feeling bold).
Now black’s a pretty unseen beast
As that’s the ref (or was, at least).
We may look odd away, for sure –
Yet when at home, we bear our crest,
Just like we’ve done a century or more
Upon our chest –
We don the colours that bring out our best.
