Without Rhyme or Reason

[Dunc]

27 April 2015



SALUTE TO PEPPER

Pepper is a robot with a clever cuddly brain.
He figures when you're sunshine or indifferent or rain.
He also follows orders of particular kinds
and he speaks a dozen languages the better to read minds.
Two thousand bucks suffices to let you take one home
to chat and sympathise and clean and charge your mobile phone.

Ah Pepper, Pepper, Pepper! You're the future full in view!
Your children will do all the work our children used to do -
the cleaners, drivers, carers, the unloaders, stitchers, guards
and as you grow still smarter, the professionals and their pards
till the folks designing robots too will join the unemployed
and all our great-grandchildren find that every job's destroyed.

No, that's too harsh. Let's say they'll never lack sufficient leisure
to sample robot cooks or bed with robots for their pleasure
and gasp at works of genius by auto arts and poets
and dance to styles of music dialling choates and inchoates.
And all the adolescents who go boozing and take drugs
will use remote devices to pursue the trade of thugs.

So in this world, I'm nearly sure, we humans will survive
by being the machine while it's the robot who's alive.



  

[Sorella]

Hahaha -- two NaPo poets talking in your haiku, right?

Scary dystopia, very clever rhyming!

Sorella

[Dunc]

Karin - Yup, two NaPoisti. Thanks for dropping in!

Regards / Dunc

[Dunc]

28 April 2015



EXECUTIVE

Who has the instant books,
who gets the physics right,
who works the team of cooks,
when it’s ‘Let there be light’?

Me, the contract arm:
magic's only wishes
so I with speed and calm
turn them into fishes

and loaves and wine, no sweat,
and anti-balrog aura ...
Jo! get that, be a pet -
a quick aholomora.



  

[Steven]

There's some great metrical fun to be had in 'Salute to Pepper'.

Some of the rhymes are amazingly inventive, as are some of the choices of diction. poets/inchoates included -

I think the phrase 'swallowed a dictionary' could be changed to 'commanded a dictionary' when reading your work. The diction is really enviable.

[Dunc]

Steven - why, thank you for the kind words! Glad you enjoyed it.

Regards / Dunc

[shadygrove]

Dazzling wordplay in here. And I've never met Pepper, who strikes me as rather weirdly negative and demanding for a robot. Do I *need* a robot to ask me for a new name and $100? I think not.

[Dunc]

Shady - when it'll cook and clean and make the bed and do the washing and the shopping and the gardening and your tax return and never complain or ask for a raise or a day off, you may be persuaded to reconsider. But no, it's not obligatory yet. Thanks for dropping in. Regards / Dunc

[Dunc]

29 April 2015



NEAR WYALONG

The land out Wyalong way
lies dry and flat like Ashbery wrote it
and there at end of summer and of day
we stood on desert’s verge with the red road.

No stir of wind, no cloud, nowhere a sound,
night rising with the sunset’s falling rays
and silent too we looked up till we found
the first stars, then the next, then the cascade.

Old sky, old earth changing to naked cold,
the air dropping into the ragged scrub,
all things but us aware how the dark takes hold,
how black the starlight shadows squat.

We almost touched hands, sorry it reached an ending,
but each alone, alight, ascending.


  

[Dunc]

30 April 2015



AN APRIL RIDDLE

My first is in moron but not in emir
galah has my second but not gondolier,
my third is in psycho but not in sane
my fourth is in photo but not in thane
my fifth is in filth but not in wealth
my sixth is in coal but not in health
my seventh’s in gaol but not in lamb
and my eighth is in slum but not in spam.
My all is one who’s made April’s error
and if you’re in doubt, well, here's the mirror.


  

[Sorella]

Just landed and got on the Forum and dammit if Dunc mustn't have finished NaPo! A riddle even I managed. Before that, a love poem surely, with desert and stars and cold! Congratulations!
Sorella

[Arlene]

well, that was fun, cats and Pluto, robot and riddle...

[BrianIsSmilingAtYou]

27 April 2015



SALUTE TO PEPPER

Pepper is a robot with a clever cuddly brain.
He figures when you're sunshine or indifferent or rain.
He also follows orders of particular kinds
and he speaks a dozen languages the better to read minds.
Two thousand bucks suffices to let you take one home
to chat and sympathise and clean and charge your mobile phone.

Ah Pepper, Pepper, Pepper! You're the future full in view!
Your children will do all the work our children used to do -
the cleaners, drivers, carers, the unloaders, stitchers, guards
and as you grow still smarter, the professionals and their pards
till the folks designing robots too will join the unemployed
and all our great-grandchildren find that every job's destroyed.

No, that's too harsh. Let's say they'll never lack sufficient leisure
to sample robot cooks or bed with robots for their pleasure
and gasp at works of genius by auto arts and poets
and dance to styles of music dialling choates and inchoates.
And all the adolescents who go boozing and take drugs
will use remote devices to pursue the trade of thugs.

So in this world, I'm nearly sure, we humans will survive
by being the machine while it's the robot who's alive.
  

Well done rhyme and meter for this robotic ode.

I watched the video, and I must confess I do find such things fascinating.

You spell out a lot of the concerns and issues, and I have seen them addressed in Asimov's works and others works, and Asimov, of course, had created his "Three Laws of Robotics" to help ameliorate the original plot-problem with robots, which was the Frankenstein or Golem complex.

The larger question, which you address here, is what is the social, economic, and sexual impact or such technology. Do we become more or less human?

Some of the rhymes are beyond clever--poets/inchoates comes to mind.

You're working at full tilt on this one.

BrianIs AtYou

[MEHope]

Oh Amen and Yuk Yuk!

22 April 2015

TO RICHARD DAWKINS

Do they annoy, creationists who bawl
that everything was made with magic words,
the ark was brontosaured above the plimsoll,
the state must silence school and science boards –
do they annoy? God yes, annoy us all.

And is the entire measure of belief
wrapped up indignant in these crazy quilts
wit-proofed? Or might we give
a space for wider dreams on longer stilts
where stepping over borders is motif?

No, Richard cries, no, no! – both are untrue
and wholly indistinguishable in error
so one thing only can we, must we, do –
shout down, condemn, destroy the lot forever
and cleanse the world with my more reasoned view.

Dick, your trouble is, you’re blind to humour;
you lack that sense that tells us when to grin;
that’s maybe why you always seize the hammer –
you have no funny outlets for your spleen;
and why your intuition’s not full number.

My modest proposal, that, to whet your craft.
And though, okay, you’re right about the creos,
the sharks can have ’em, pitch ’em from the raft,
the earth has girth enough for kindly theos –
as you may find should you find how to laugh.



  

[larryrap]

Congrats, perpetual early bird Dunc!

That desert poem is lovely.
Damn, I haven't a clue about the riddle.

Looking forward already to your NaPo 2016 work.