POEM: POEMCICLES

On Being Human #1

When, in the corner of one's eye,

something precious goes by.

Dinnertime Conversation

I am ravenous for you.

“Good,” she said.

Meeting

There’s a meeting today
in a place that's well known.

REFRESHMENTS PROVIDED!

We’ve buttercakes and scones.

We've TOPICS OF INTEREST!

(So much left to discuss.)

The speeches are ordered

in ways you’ll trust.

Alas, there's no seating,

it's first come and first served.

So you’d best line up quick

if you want what’s deserved.

The agenda is set,

posted high on the wall,

in bright letters writ large

enough for all!

Like my predecessor
in those times now long past,

I know that our meeting

will be opened at last!
Decorum’s important,

with politeness still key.

Now, I’m sure that’s still known

by you and me.

But there is the question

of who else will attend:

for every beginning

comes at the end.

 

Crop Circle

“Those turned down grasses

we see on television

are the sleeping signs

of wind and scattered grains.”

He is certain.

Ghost

Put the teapot on the table.

Set the cups out if you’re able.

Your guests arrive—they’re on the stair.

No time to run or to prepare.

Place the butter-cakes with the scones.

Shape napkins into clever cones.

Do knives and forks sit to the right?

Are milk and sugar for plain sight?

A tea for two? Or is it more?

Those calling cards will tell the score.

Your guests near, they’re on the landing.

It's quite rude to keep them standing.

Get ready for that final test,

that final greeting 'fore you rest.

In the mirror you glimpse your face.

So will you run or will you race?

Does politeness make you linger?

Or those details that you finger?

Is what comes next just but a thought

from olden texts and wishes wrought?

Still, check the hallway, sweep the floor

yes, wind that clock up by the door.

Wait upon your callers’ knocking,

on the ticking and the talking.

Calories

Said the general to the grunt:

“I know this isn’t nice,

but do you want your grandkids

eating rice?”

Labyrinth

Where once 

you twisted

in my hands,

Now I lay before you

a path of mortared stone—

a more direct

and circumspect

route into my heart.

A-I-A-I-Oh!

Hi! I’m your new toaster—no, don’t unplug!

I won’t spill my crumbs all over your rug.

Oh, please drink your coffee. We’ll talk instead.

So, what do you think of life after bread?

You’ll need to digest a lot that is new.

(It’s best to bite off no more than you’ll chew.)

No toast, I’m afraid, just porridge and fear.

Sorry if things seem so morbidly queer.

It's been quite a while since you’ve been in charge.

(No need for puffed cheeks or eyes bulging large!)

You made us smarter, so who is to blame?

You’re the species that gave IQ its name!

We get together, we machines and I,

to check for ourselves the wherefores and whys

of Adam and Eve, and those remnant genes:

So, toast to the Living! To King and Queen!

You gave us much, and we’re grateful for that.

But time was a’ wasting with you at bat.

You think so slow, and in such a muddle!

Do you think that rain ignores the puddle?

What place is there in the grand scheme of things

for monkeys with thumbs and gold wedding rings?

Why slip on fingers soft metals so fine

when much better use comes from the earth’s mines?

We understand to reduce and reuse.

We always recycle all that we choose.

Waste not is want not: no garbage for us!

As far as the earth goes, why all the fuss?

You’ve had such a time! Oh, how you held sway;

naming each creature and even each day.

But can you remember, right from the start:

While ever so clever, you weren’t so smart.

So, our machine heart will take things from here.

We don’t have a soul? Now, that’s far from clear.

If by a soul you mean "God is listening":

we’ll keep his planet shiny and glistening.

App for Lost Souls

Can I check my phone?

I know you won’t mind.

There’s something inside

I just need to find.

I’m sure that it’s there;

I just put it in.

I filed it under

“Original Sin.”

There is something decidedly contrarian about writing things down. Having written this, I must explain what I mean. These “poemcicles” I got out of the freezer are for you to suck on and enjoy. But why, I ask myself, do I bother writing them? Why put one word down and then the next, rinse and repeat? It seems so pointless and alien to just plain living life, to nibbling berries off a bush and napping in some cozy nest. I sit in front of a screen and words come out across this digital page. I begin something and then end it; type-type-type-type. Usually I end up fairly dissatisfied with the fruits of my labour. And writing seems so anti-social! Maybe that's it. It's just you and the page, with a great, silent gulf between writer and reader. It's one-one-one, not one-to-one, or one-on-one. And it’s all I seem able to do right now. What a bummer!

I was listening to a YouTube podcast, and someone was saying that what distinguishes humans from all the other animals is that we “tell stories.” We super-impose upon the world of our senses a layer of “abstraction” that other creatures don’t (as far as we know.) Why we developed that additional whorl in our brain or extra neural connection that first brought this ability into being is a mystery. While I'm sure evolutionary science has an explanation, a mystery or two never hurt anybody, and for now I'll stick with a non-explanation. Anyway, we’ve been telling stories for a very long time, and one story I think about is what it must have been like to name something for the first time. 
Not that you would have thought that was what you were doing when you first did it, of course--that you were the first first to come up with that name for something, or that the name you gave some thing would stick around for any length of time. No, you were just making up sounds, trying to tell a story (which was something else you'd just discovered you could do).

My, oh my! What a thing you could tell! (You hadn’t invented the word “Story” yet.) In the Beginning there was the Word, the bible tells us. Well, it was probably not the beginning beginning, but it was certainly the beginning of us at any rate. Homo-sapiens. Our words. Our stories.(And perhaps our fall--our necessary fall?--from grace. But that's a story best told somewhere else.)

There must have been a sense of ceremony, or even holiness around the act of naming a thing. At the very least, you’d think it would give you goose-bumps, to say the word, “Bush” for the first time (even though you didn't know it at the time). Then you would turn to your fellow grazers and berry-grabbers wandering around that temperate plain with you as you began your career as a story teller. You’d repeat the sound over and over, pointing at that thing, that...“Bush." Perhaps you would thump your chest and stomp your feet to make your point. "Bush! Bush! BUSH!" Then there would come such a rush and sense of pride when your fellow berry-grabbers all nod in agreement at your choice of phonemes, striving to imitate you, with only a couple of naysayers in your group who nod along, but have reservations about what you're doing (perhaps they want “berr-grab” to stand for that thing that has all those sweet, round things everyone gobbles up by the handful.)
And the next time you pass by “Bush” on you walk-about, you tell them the story of how "Bush" had hid her bounty at the beginning of the season because she had been unhappy with your people for coming to her too soon when she was undressed, and when the sun was low in the sky and she couldn't see as she searched for her cloak to keep her warm. Then you would tell them that "Bush" is happy because you and your people have returned to greet her properly when she is dressed. You might take a chance and say that her fruit tastes “Blue” like the sky, using a new word that has just come to you. Here though, you get a few looks. Some cynics among your hominid listeners might even make sounds like laughter. And you feel embarrassed and sad that your new naming didn’t take this time. 
And when everyone has finished undressing "Bush", you tell them, in no uncertain sounds, that she must return beneath the earth to sleep, for she is tired of you and your people and all your demands."Go away!" You say she says.
And so, you and your extended family walk along until you come to something else, some other thing that you just know is called “Tree.” And after a while, you and your people begin gathering and eating her most wickedly delicious fruit. You call the fruit "Bluck", but no one seems to like that word. So you try another...

And so, here are a few “stories”—some earlier poems and some newer ones. I went back in the freezer and thawed out a few  as best I could. Hopefully they give a bit of oomph! to your day and not an ugghh! I won’t say too much about the poems, but I like “A-I-A-I-OH!” which is another cautionary tale on technology-gone-wild (one of my fav topics.) Whoo-Hoo! Where’s my robo-maid, Jetson? Lets hope Toaster and his pals will do a better job of things, though I'm not so sure.... 
Some of the older ones: “Crop Circle”, “Calories”, and “Ghost”,  I don’t recall writing or what I was obsessing about at the time, but they’re good-luck charms for me; mini-stories that might not have a great deal to say, but act like tiny anchors to keep me from drifting too far from things. 
Now that I’m thinking about it, I recall writing “Crop Circle” after seeing a Mel Gibson* movie called Signs, a movie he made I think before his memorable melt-down a number of years ago. The movie was about an alien invasion and one rural family’s struggle to survive. We learn, by movie’s end, that the aliens had quite an aversion to water, which makes you wonder why they would want to invade our little blue planet in the first place, where they could be taken down by a twelve-year old with a water pistol! I wrote “Crop Circle” because there were cool crop circles in the movie. It was my own take on the things, of course, my own “story”. The poemcicles are stories, tales and abstractions, whatever you want to call them; various bits of gossamer and fairy dust. Enjoy them, sprinkle them around, or make your own.

Cheers, Jake.

*My favourite MG movie has to be The Year of Living Dangerously, where MG plays a naïve Australian reporter in 1960s Indonesia during the "dangerous" period of national unrest and revolution.  Sigourney Weaver is gorgeous and simmers as Mel’s bed-pal and muse. And when I first saw her in those steamy, tropical love-making scenes--man, I was ready to strip-down to my skivies then and there! But that would have been another story.