BIG QUESTION

Dear old Parramatta

is full of Big Data:

much digital matter –

on a ‘lectric platter.

Not just one at a time

but a zill on a dime!

Bits in a paradigm,

ten billion re a crime.

So, will they help to solve,

progressively evolve

skills to then resolve

problems that won’t dissolve?

Now, are these data real,

or cleverly conceal

what’s true within a deal

inside a frame of steel?

One day they will control:

when they are on a roll,

we’ll be on the dole.

Be worried for your soul!

IN PRAISE OF PANCAKES

They may not be capable of developing

new drugs for rheumatoid arthritis

or given to existential dispute,

but their ability to bring joy to taste buds,

and, in fulsome quantity,

fill the tummy with fluffy calories

for breakfast, with bacon and maple syrup,

is second to none.

They are not staple enough

(like bread)

to have been part of the Last Supper

but when I consider

how my Last Breakfast might be spent

I favour it being among family and friends,

each comforted by the sheer delight

of a generous serve.

VALE

Rosewood.  The silver handles

will be removed before the fire

but the flowers on the lid,

dust of incense, drops of holy water

will remain, keep his body company –

our final, inadequate benediction.

Now the process is anonymous –

the coffin sinks:

the men who light and they who stoke,

who slide it into the oven,

are without names

and they don’t know his.

We knew and he knew the cancer’s name:

it was devilishly clever,

relentless, finding its obstructing way

around stents and into lumens.

It declared conquest over his unconscious form

last Friday.  Pyrrhic, it seemed to me.

After the mass and committal, we who are left

assemble outside in the winter wind

view one another’s wrinkles

take note of obvious infirmities

count ourselves lucky to be alive –

well – sort of.

de Chardin said as we grow old

we are increasingly penalized

for a crime we did not commit.

But the punishment is for our original sin,

of being born, of our temerity

in playing gods for three score years and ten.

Poles Apart

Two men stand stiff at the fountain,

iPhone rapiers ready,

back-to-back, repelled –

of the same magnetic pole.

Maybe I shouldn’t look –

but I’m keen to know

is this domestic,

war over a third person?

Hard to believe

it could be religion.

A quizzical child stands by – eleven –

I recognise him from my class:

I wonder if he is wondering

if he is similarly charged,

if not, which one attracts him most,

who’s who and who is his?

The Card

The morning city bus:

She squeezed past me to alight

leaving behind a book,

well read, I judged –  

unusual as most commuters

sit or stand comatose, ears plugged,

in the world of Android.

The traffic sludged to walking pace;

we were nearing the terminus.

I saw her on the footpath,

walking fast to catch the bus again.

She returned to her seat.

I handed her the book.

Quickly she checked and found a card in it.

I’d seen it but had not read it.

She thanked me,

smiling with moist eyes.

“It’s from a dear friend,” she said,

“It keeps me alive.

I don’t have long to live.”

Obstruction

Tell me, doctor, what to do

for blockage in the tubes

that nourish and remove waste

from the gut-loop

that creates and excretes

poetry.

There’s something wrong this week:

I write no rhymes:

all that I scribble is captive

to the laws of prose.

Has an important digestive enzyme

gone missing?

Or is this a case of literary gall-stones

at pains to stop the flow of bile?

(How can you write poetry without bile?)

Or appendicitis?

(I meant no offence with the parenthetic ode,

or the semi-colon.)

Google-Doc suggests a dose of Joyce

or tincture of Eliot. But you’re the expert

so tell me what to try. 

Maybe IV enthusiasm:

the Royal Wedding has drained me

(especially the sermon) so fluids? Yes, OK.

But what’s that you say?

“More sleep.” 

I waste so much time on sleep –

and then there are the dreams.

You are a hopeless romantic to suggest that

“Poems are made of such things.”

The Exchange

Will they meet in Singapore,

Trump with his VERY, VERY Big Macs,

Little Rocket Man

with his plate of noodles,

and each each with their buttons?

Will they will exchange gifts,

Trump offering geraniums,

Un a basket of rose petals

or a ticking parcel

of enriched metals?

  

Will they hammer out a deal  

to meet again,

to keep the earth alive till then?

Might Un go to Mar-a-Lago,

lose a game of golf and announce

“The deal’s a no-go” ?

This may be the end.

The afterglow will keep space warm

for millennia or more,

the most incandescent  tribute

to screwed up science

the universe has seen.