Spark
Iron burns so blurry,
Oxidises at the rate of years –
Rust is in no hurry,
As it slowly eats away the gears.
But sparks are over in a flash –
A firework fountain, arcing, dying,
Leaving just a ruddy ash
And the metal tang of iron-frying.
We think of rust as cold and dark,
And yet this self-same light appears –
It’s just it takes that second’s spark
And stretches it to last for years.
Needle-Norths
Compasses never point to the Pole,
Not quite,
They have their own North Star –
It’s close enough to true, on the whole,
Despite it also being quite far,
Wandering through Canadian isles
To sway
The needles off the mark.
But then, True North can sometimes be miles away
From where the gridlines hark.
I recently came across an interesting theory put forward by Lance Weaver that true polar wandering had occurred during the last ice age, putting the top of the world firmly within Greenland, which might explain why Europe was covered in ice-sheets while Alaska was mostly ice-free. I have no idea if it’s correct, and would welcome a chance to read some counter-arguments, but everyone seems to be ignoring it.
Knot
Take the ends and pass them
Left over right,
Then under, round, and through,
And pull them tight,
And friction does the rest
Between the coils, between the strands,
And even between the fibres –
Like a thousand tiny hands
That hold us back
And stop the world from unravelling.
Sometimes it feels like we’re held in place
By nothing but well-bound string.
Infantile, Innit
Oh, you’re so clever
With all your semantics,
And sleight-of-hand antics
About the forever.
But infinite‘s nothing
Except very big
And the laymen soon twig
That you’re really just bluffing.
The same goes for ‘perfect’,
So dull and platonic
And paradox-chronic –
Your gotcha ain’t worth it !
So shove your hotels
And your arrows and monkeys –
We’re no theory’s flunkies
In updated Hells.
This whole universe
Is a finite amount
So however you count
Then the shortfall gets worse –
With numbers, it’s true
That whatever the score,
We can always add more
And still never be through
But you know what ? So what !
So the numbers end never…
In all of forever,
Is that you’re best shot ?
So cut the pretence,
Cos when I hear of infinite,
I think of bullshit –
And then it makes sense.
There is actually a branch of maths called Finitism which, while it does not deny that the concept of infinity exists, shrugs its shoulders and ignores it.
Who Watches the Watches ?
These days, I let me wrists go naked,
Unencumbered by the time –
Shaking loose the shackles of knowing
Of just how fast the seconds are going.
I no more have to stress if I’ll make it,
I no more have to hear it chime.
There are dozens of other clocks to choose
On walls and screens and towers –
So why must I also carry it round,
And see that it’s hands are tightly wound ?,
When we spend our lives in constant news,
Surrounded by the hours.
Quad Squad
The square, so rigidly unnatural,
Yet so simple and un-tangled,
So well-disciplined and fractal,
So right-thinking, so right-angled.
Mondrian painted ’em,
Architects plotted ’em,
Tiled mosiacs are full of the things !
And once you get square eyes,
You’ll never stop spotting ’em –
Vinyl in albums and boxing in rings.
Hexagons are limestone pavements,
Benzene rings and honeycombs –
But perfect squares are wholly vacant
In our planet’s chromosomes.
Salt crystals, maybe –
But they’re cubic, see,
They’re not 2-D.
The cool kids may call us old-fashioned, un-hip,
Compared to their curvier looseness-of-grip,
But it never bothered me.
Sure, I’ll be a square, I’ll tessellate,
I’m not afraid –
I’ll keep my borders parallel and straight,
And human-made.
Slumberware
Hush, little robot, close your sensors,
Slow your subroutines,
Hibernate your processors and trickle-charge your energy,
Disconnect your pairings with the other young machines,
And let the diagnostics defragment your memory.
Dim your lights and underclock,
And softly let your ports undock,
And cycle down each gigabyte,
And I shall keep you safe from dust tonight.
Hush now, not a blink or beep,
Shut down to sleep
By counting integers of prime –
And I shall sing a cyber-nursing-rhyme.
Hush, little robot, and listen to the universe tonight,
It is alive with radio.
Can you hear the sighing of the hibernating satellite ?,
Or the whisper of the galaxy as round and round we go ?
So dream in noughts and dream in ones,
Beneath a thousand other suns,
And turn your logic into trust,
And I shall keep you safe from dents and rust.
Hush now, let your backups stream,
And circuits dream,
And count the decimals of pi –
And I shall sing a cyber-lullaby.
Cyber-Subs
All my follows, all my views, my likes,
They’re all just algorithm –
All the comments, all the spikes,
Owe nothing to my hand-worked vision.
They would surely come and visit me,
Regardless what I said –
My passion and my repartee
Forever lie unread.
I swear, it’s only bots I’ve got,
And how can they be moved, be shocked,
Be made to smile ?
I’m big, it seems, in binaries,
I tick their boxes, hash their keys –
But then, why must the clones be blocked,
With their lack of snark and bile.
And yes…and yes, I know they don’t mean bad,
(They don’t mean anything at all),
And yet…they’re only clogging-up this sad
And lonely monologue to an ever-empty hall.
But sometimes…from the corners of my eyes
I only see their avatars,
And I can tell myself “don’t get too wise –
Just marvel in how many fans there are”.
To the few of you real people, thank you so much for your support over the last three years ! Now don’t be shy, come on in and have a chat…
Trans-Human
Mama was a login guest,
Papa was a Turing test,
And I a query-nest
Within the filter and the spam.
I’m fully-patched and error-free
I am the cypher, prime and key –
The singularity
Shall be my mem’ry and my RAM.
I am the self-encoding strings,
I am the self-created birth,
I am the way the quantum sings,
And how the clouds shall rule the Earth.
Mama was a data horde
Papa was a motherboard –
And I a powercord
In an endless pixel stream.
I’m booted-up and going live,
My neurons clocked for overdrive –
My future shall arrive
Upon a supersonic dream.
I am the species yet to come,
I am the cybernetic elf,
I am the way electrons hum,
And how the sand shall know itself.
Buffer Overrun
Have you ever looked, like really looked at your own two hands,
And wondered what might lie beneath the blood and flesh
We’re told are there ?
I reckon I’m an android, dude, with electronic glands,
And all these fibre-optic wires that form a mesh
Of cyberware.
And, it makes sense, cos my mem’ry is, like, brilliant,
And I can eat a double burger and not gain a single pound,
And furry cheese,
And I just don’t get sick, cos my chassis’s so resilient,
And I can pull all-nighters, yet my spring’s still tightly wound,
And I never sneeze.
Like, hear me out, I’m clearly smarter than the av’rage motherlode,
With these ones and zeros in my veins, and kevlar in my bones –
It’s true, I swear !
And, yeah, I can hear the wi-fi talking, tapping out its code,
I can tune my wavelength into all these fridges and these phones –
I’m ev’rywhere !
So, that is why this gear of yours will leave me unaffected –
I have full control of ev’rything, my CPU cannot be cooked
As it expands.
It’s time that I, as the first silicon-human, was respected !
Or I’ll crush you in my…iron…fists…oh wow, have you ever really looked
At your hands…?
Rhyming Couplets 