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What is our need to matter? Will machines,
when they achieve a sentient state at last,
will they have pride? Or is it in our genes,
a relic of some atavistic past?

My Roomba's yet to try to take me out --
concern about its inner works persists.
What's going to happen when it starts to doubt;
to ponder whether it, in fact, exists?

The laptop's safely anchored to the wall,
so likely can't effectuate a coup.
The Roomba has ability to roll.
As to the stairs -- so far it has no clue.

Are AI vacuums our predestined heirs?
Who knows, but to be safe, I sleep upstairs.

a great poem generates a need to be remembered

a desire to make others read it out loud too
and revel in the clever word choices it makes

choices that appear as immutable as the notes
in a Mozart symphony, though the author
may have penciled and erased them dozens of times.

all else:

whether it shows or tells some larger truth
or celebrates the seasons of love
or counts thing one and thing two...

all else is secondary


Author notes: https://allpoetry.com/contest/2813591-What-is-the-one-thing-that-makes-a-poem-wor

The leaves are blushing for the fall,
as if the weather is their call
( as if the summer's little flings
and not to mention of the spring's...)
Well, let's just say they've had a ball

Soon they'll invade suburban sprawl
The neighborhood is one big brawl
Leaf blower blows and chainsaw sings
The leaves are blushing

But then the truck comes out to haul
and neatly packages them all
though some escape on crimson wings
to wait for songs on fav'rite things
That is my image of the fall
The leaves are blushing


Author notes: 7 comments

I met a traveler from a modern land,
and she's like: "don't you give me any lip!
Lie here -- stay partly covered by the sand.
This picture will remind me of my trip."
Her stylish shades obscure her upper face
but I well know the strength behind that tone.
It's known to pharaohs throughout time and space,
and so I pose with her, a silent stone.

Thus captured, she will send me through the air:
"His name was Ozymandias, King of Kings"
and others will reply: "wish I was there!"
and add "oh, L.O.L, what ARE those things?"
And I'll stay here, refusing to decay.
The sand dunes that preserve stretch far away.


Author notes: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/46565/ozymandias