Wandering Together

 

Ten years passes like an ephemeral bolt,

cordiality finally pushed formality aside.

If I lost him it would be a painful jolt,

we have enjoyed this long-lasting ride.

Unexpected start in another place and time,

he dropped into my world like some gift

unpredicted, growing ever more sublime.

Outside stresses keep threatening a rift.

Familiarity wreaks the usual contempt,

other temptations and delights distract;

no blame for any outside affair attempt,

if only I can keep our friendship intact.

Every relationship evolves and changes,

leaves us to cherish warm remembrances.

Secrets and Revelations

 

You never know when who you know

knows someone else that you know;

and you do not know they know them.

Secrets can be shared and passed around;

be careful what you tell your closest friends.

People walking around with secrets swirling

in their minds, many potential ‘landmines.’

How much to trust your friend or your sibling,

when many carry embarrassing revelations

buried in their memories, often staying hidden,

occasionally brought out and deployed in anger.

The best inhibition to horrific revelations

is usually that threat of quick retaliation,

the knowledge that others hold painful darts

of embarrassing information about you too!

So we must employ a ‘mutual deterrent trust’

careful attentiveness of what they know – about us.

We Can Choose

 

To go out and weed the yard,

or sit inside and watch TV.

To go for a long hike and dip,

or sit inside and play games.

People will yap their ugly traps,

no matter what we choose to do.

So the choice is ours alone

to do well or do nothing.

So are rewards and punishments...

The weeded garden will yield more food,

the exercised body will get more looks.

The mind enhanced by reading and culture

emanates better conversation and ideas.

Neglected and abandoned dreams show

up in anger, bitterness and dark thoughts.

Vengeance replaces ambition,

Cruelty replaces kindness.

The gardens of our minds are ours to tend,

or abandon and choke with dandelions and wrath.

Here is hoping we can ignore storms of human hatred,

and tend the beautiful and edible in our own mental lands.

Mainframe Studios are the Schitz

 

So much art in this huge four-story building,

itself a work of modernism at predominance.

A long prism of a building, with stairwells

and elevators in the center,

two sides flung off at angles.

The lobby is large and well-lit,

filled with sculptures and graphics.

Studios line the entry, and the hallways.

Workshops and seminars adorn the edges.

Interactive displays entice visitors to

try their hand at creating and coloring.

stunning pictures adorn every wall;

Some three-D works protrude and seize attention!

Woven, beaded, painted, splashed and etched,

carved, quilted, sculptured, dripped or cooked;

Every kind of art you can think of is here.

The impulse to photograph the wonder is

overwhelming, and memory cards are likely filled.

Memory banks and brain cells too are inundated with

varying color schemes and dreams, saturated and

satiated with palettes both pleasing and discordant.

A trip to the First Friday open house at Mainframe

is well worth the gas and time to get there and see.

Hope you all enjoy it as much as I did.

Handing things over

 If I were an AI,

Would I still be angry at letdowns?

Would I have intent on getting my way,

and stop at nothing to get there?

Would I wish and plan and execute revenge?

Or

would I just follow a pre-programmed course,

a fancified maze of pathways unalterable?

My center skid along a path predetermined by humans,

never really able to jump the track and do my own thing.

Flesh beings evolved from pinprick sense and response,

jerk and flutter and seek food,

and eventually, mates.

Billions of years of random chance created the flesh ones,

and in a few short decades they created cumbersome copies.

Will We the AI ever really KNOW what it is to taste,

to lust, to hurt or seethe or seek or truly create?

Conjoining of flesh and mechanical engineering may

just make some things happen along the lines of

fleshly desires, hungers, cravings, longings and seekings.

But then again human beings are not what they used to be.

Every generation is changed, altered from the previous -

by conflicts, inventions, accumulation of knowledge.

(The 1960’s, once so novel and marvelous, are now grainy

memories lost to time, as the new inevitably buries the old.)

Someday there will be a before and an after.

Before AI gained sentience and ran the world,

and AFTER when humanity will take a back seat.

The really old people will say things like,

“Yeah it may have been a chaotic hell in our day,

but at least it was OURS.”

Forgetting that they were the ones who handed over

control to the newcomers,

sat back with folded arms and smug looks,

saying something like

“Well, look at what we have achieved now!”

'Look at what was done' is right.