Sunday 22 January 2017

Poem for the day

Shoe-saving string theorist Stephen Hawking is not fit to tie my laces, but is right to warn about the dangers of AI. A rogue cyborg seizing power could be disastrous for the world, but any programming errors would be easy to spot in the malfunctioning language, and other giveaways such as unconvincing skin and hair. I was saying this to my cat last night when Dr. Bendi the fifth and final let himself in with a key made of ice - more hygienic, but the lock rusts - and started waggling and buzzing, claiming to be a zzzzzom-bee. I don't know about you, but I always find zzzzzom-bee charades boring. The answer's always flower, but you have to go the distance. And the direction. Easy puzzles for a Sun reader. Then he insisted a dog was really a record player. A speaker, a listener and His Master's Voice. the feedback loop, DOG. 'Bees dead, dogs alive' he said. I counted 12 times. 'One mirror good, two mirrors better'. Wel, I think we know who's barking. 'Self-reflection!' he howled.

The night degenerated - if you can believe it - into an argument over how to spell somniloquent. 'It's got an I in it' I said, having googled it 5 minutes ago. 'There's no I in it, that's the whole point!' he buzz-barked back, quite animated. And this explains his unorthodox spelling:-

Somneloquent bees
That read from the flower
Pray tell by the Sun
Whence the source of thy power

Cross-pollinate minds
With hexagonal money
And melt wax the humans
From nectar to honey

Friday 20 January 2017

Phantom poem for the day

They say in Abati cwm-hir that each man is born with a spade to bury his father. They say in Cnwch-y-craig that each man is born with a hoe to plough his mother. And they say in Llanfihangel-y-creuddyn that each man is a digestive tube with a lightbulb for a head. That's why I don't go out much. But Idris does, it's just a shame he comes back in. Donne's muse trotted on a dromedary. Wordsworth was the pointing on other's brickwork. And Shelley's bird did not soar too high. But Idris has a stop-go animated virtual muse he's rather wedded to, and insists that two heads are better than one, evolutionarily speaking. Wel, I'm in two minds about that, but Idris seems certain...

Phantom limb, phantom pain,
Phantom phantom in the brain,
Two at once the conscious seed,
One to write, and one to read.