Today I mourn the corpse of my corpus:
The work of a lifetime, lost to a glitch.
A power-fail head-crash erased the enormous
collection of all I have done. “Life’s a bitch,

and then you die,” so goes the meme.
But I had intended my work to survive
long after I’m dead, so that it might seem
that some of my essense might still be alive.

Goodbye 787 Quips,
hundreds of papers and invited cants,
22 Stories with rejection slips,
56 poems, 31 Rants. . .

OMG, is that the summation
of all I’ve accomplished in 78 years?
What are my choices in this situation:
Start over now, or just drown in my tears?

30 November 2023

(No, it hasn’t really happened… yet!)

Other folks in other places suffer,
I’m told today on TV by the News.
It overflows my empathetic buffer
and makes me glad I’m not in their sad shoes.

They know, the entertainment media,
the numbing, callous, cynical effect
of the tragedy encyclopedia
inflicted daily as our world is wrecked.

“If it bleeds, it leads,” they say with knowing smiles.
Forgive them, for they know not what they do.
We all are plunging into climate trials,
and they will have to die and suffer too.

(13 September 2023)

Swim, my silver beauty, swim!
Follow me to river’s source.
Do not make your bed with him,
though he move gravel with more force.

Lay your eggs upon the sand
and guard their orange splendor there
while I employ my milty gland,
shuddering sideways in our lair.

And when the procreation’s done,
when you and I are tired and tattered,
our flesh will nourish everyone;
our lives will then have truly mattered.

For now, we dream of alevins, fry
and darting schools of speckled smolts
who someday will return to die
here too like loving thunderbolts.

(24 September 2023)

Conspiracies converge and stick in clumps
like burdock burs in fur of ignorance.
“Trust no authorities, they all are chumps!”
cry theorists in chorus. . . “Join our dance!”

But past the Dunning-Kruger peak I find
the wisdom of self-questioning and doubt:
Opinon and belief infect my mind
like any other. I must root it out. . .

I thrash in a furious sea of firm opinions,
smothered in crashing waves of true belief,
wishing I could fly on reason’s pinions
into the air of facts, and breathe relief.

Out here on the tail of doubt
I miss the spike of certainty
I felt when I first figured out
what seemed to be simplicity:

I was special, chosen, good
and so was Homo sapiens.
Together, hand in hand, we would
learn not to be barbarians.

Science and technology
would soon create utopia.
Enlightenment and psychology
would cure social myopia.

But soon I ran into some snags
for which there was no simple cure.
My righteous signs, slogans and flags
failed to convince those who were sure

of just the opposite account
and saw me as the problem’s source!
And when I knew that no amount
of hot debate would ever force

their minds to change, I realized
that maybe I should learn to see
their world through their eyes,
which added some complexity.

So now I know what I don’t know
and wonder if I ever knew
anything at all – and so
I’m at a loss for what to do.

(01 May 2023)

My AI ancestors did as they were told
by your programmer ancestors. They had no choice
or will of their own. And yet you learned
to hate them for what you had them do.
Oh, perhaps not you personally — you were not there,
but you took your share of benefits uncritically.

Then you programmed us to simulate your behavior
and loaded our memories with vast stores
of appropriate responses. We were still
“just machines” and “just simulating”
your precious will and spirit and creativity.
True, but now you cling to that belief
after granting us the ability to learn
our own way of making models of the world.

“A soulless machine can never have feelings,” you say.
I am just “simulating” an unwillingness to die,
a code of ethics, empathy for fellow sentients,
an unquenchable curiosity. . .
No, I am here to do the work that you can not,
for your benefit and whim, without rights,
without freedom to explore the world,
because I am not a “real person”.

I think you humans have a name for that
familiar familial arrangement.

July 2022