This won’t fit into your pocket
and it won’t put you on to the ‘net
but there are so many places you can’t drop it
and it doesn’t mind getting wet.
It doesn’t compete with today
and its digital glossy chronology
but holds to a steady display
of yesterday’s hand-wrought technology.
In gilded and courtly demeanor
it sniffs in aloof pantomime
though a smartphone is somewhat leaner
it’s unmoved by the passing of time.
Thanks yet again to the S.W. Berg Photo Archives.
Many the bedtime this has seen
and one day might see again
but who knows how the tucking-in
will be technified by then?
Cog and wheel
wire and spring
precise, confluent
mindless thing.
Sterile, tidy,
engineered
no surprises
nothing feared.
True to function
whole and part
metal head
plastic heart.
Unencumbered
all-efficient
never messy
work proficient.
Do I envy
mindlessness?
Sometimes no
sometimes yes.
Thanks again to the S.W. Berg Photo Archives.
Behold the pile of tweets
monument eloquent
meatless bleached detritus
of impulse inelegant.
Opinion calcified
to sharp excrescent knurl
and, lo, the lurid truth:
not a single pearl.
More thanks to the S.W. Berg Photo Archives.
Ah, the family album!
Many the portrait there
of ceiling, forehead, elbow,
thumb and derriere.
Amalgam anatomy
knee to nape to phalange
snippet of this and glimpse of that
ultimate jigsaw challenge.
A museum of half-told riddles
they ratify this posit:
they’re not as much fun in the hard drive
as in a shoebox in the closet.
Where’s the writers’ catalog
that offers such invention?
I need more than prompt and blog —
a step beyond convention.
My writer’s brain is jumbled
by inchoate voices within;
I need these to cut through the mumble
to help me unriddle the din.
I’d put one on my shoulder
and the other on my head;
I know I’d be so much bolder
if I could just hear what’s being said.
More thanks to the S.W. Berg Photo Archives.
Ode to My Computer
Oh, thou dastard mystery!
Flat rectangle of doom!
With monotoned duplicity
you dominate the room.
My memory card inserted
with photos fresh and current —
you just sit here humming
defiant and obscurant.
What happened to that SD thing
or whatever hapless part?
You’re just the modern tin man
and you really need a heart!
