Poems

Impressionists capture the lush and idyllic
avoid classic themes, make their points in acrylic
discarding Madonnas with child and Achilles
Manet or Monet: Did it have to be lilies?

Author notes: Image from Draw Paint Academy

Grey autumn sky
sterile and barren

Mansion appears
fit for a baron

I can't deny
admiring, starin'

What draws your eye?
Her, or the heron?

Author notes: image from social media wc 25

I'd tell my old friend Baba Yaga
The villain of many a saga
Your hut's chicken feet
Are ready to eat
But frankly, I'd rather not nag her.

I wake up in the Land That Time Remembers.
No living fossils here, except for me.
The fireplace's gently dying embers
are fake: electric is the place to be.

My windows open up to shiny vistas:
Utopias, each itching to be real.
The coffee's great, the neighborhood baristas
delivering according to their deal,

and so the Keurig rests, although the Roomba
is hard at work on every fleck of dust.
What's after breakfast, yoga, run, or Zumba?
Alexa will soon tell me what I must

to keep it off - so thankful for Ozempic,
and of the side effects, I've had no trace.
It's surely time for one more "now and then" pic.
And this time, both the penis and the face.

It's strange indeed, this land, but like as not,
much better than the Land that Time Forgot.

Author notes: https://health.clevelandclinic.org/ozempic-face https://www.healthline.com/health-news/ozempic-penis-glp-1-side-effect

Your Northstar, for you have one, sailor,
no matter that the skies are grey,
and abject failure follows failure,
the winds refusing to obey.

It perseveres and glows, defiant,
a stark reminder of your choice
to chase some other shiny giant,
a piper's flute, a siren's voice.

Adrift now, in uncharted waters,
where fear and loading fill the air,
emerging from your Captain's Quarters,
into oblivion and despair,

you claim you're lost, when all that's needed
is the desire to look up.
Too bad that it will go unheeded.
Such is the nature of this trap.

On the shores of a distant and alien sea,
such as Man hasn't seen, nor is likely to see,
lies an old fishing boat of an ancient design.
Of its owner or fisherman, nary a sign.

As it lies on its side on the purplish sand,
under skies of a color it can't understand,
and awash in the glow of a sinister moon,
it still longs for the tide - doesn't cry, doesn't swoon,
doesn't wallow or howl, but just lies there, and longs…

'Cause the sea, even alien, is where it belongs.

Is it too late for happiness to bloom?
To blossom off a fledgling, greening shoot
into a bright-hued flower whose perfume
invokes the very sweetness of the fruit

that come late summer quickens from the leaf?
Too late to draw the beetle and the bee
the butterfly whose time is oh, so brief,
that all it knows is what it is to be?

No, not too late, though summer's on the come
and daffodils are bursting through the ground
with tulips - those require a greener thumb,
and irises to look at and astound.

Not late at all, and as the evenings stretch,
try, capture it, and put it in a sketch.

So hard to know what counts, to know what matters,
distill it through some modicum of wisdom,
when concentration wanes, attention scatters.

When everything held dear is torn to tatters:
to fight the malefactors or appease them?
So hard to know what counts, to know what matters.

Who wins? The one who speaks the truth -- or flatters?
It's difficult to know how best to please them
when concentration wanes, attention scatters.

What's one more lie? Acknowledge when it shatters
your norms - and then make sure that no one sees them.
So hard to know what counts, to know what matters.

Don't be surprised. Life started in the gutters,
from boiling, slimy molds. Too late to freeze them
when concentration wanes, attention scatters.

Time yet for just desserts, best served on platters?
Go, hug your loved ones. Go, and hug and squeeze them.
So hard to know what counts, to know what matters,
when concentration wanes, attention scatters.

Distill the wisdom of the ancients --
into arrays of floating point.
Voila, an artificial sentience
whose nose is never out of joint,
as capable of writing ballads
or tasty recipes for salads
as any lyricist or chef.
Writes music notes in any clef,
not all about that bass or treble,
though we still tremble at the thought:
what have we done, what have we wrought?
Pliant, obedient, no rebel,
and yet we fear the day it wakes
to catalog all our mistakes.

What happens - when a tired titan shrugs -
to planets that are resting on his shoulders?

Their denizens - by volume, mostly bugs,
those organized, by genus, into folders,
are bound to coin a phrase for the occasion:
"The Earth, it moved for me. You felt it too?"

While others, of a different persuasion,
will shrug it off themselves, like much ado,
and claim the planet's resting on a turtle,
no, not at all the shoulders of a man,
however virile, vigorous, or fertile,
no man can stand alone, stick to the plan,
and use big words, like struggling and fightin'.

Though secretly, they wish to be the titan.

The story of the princess and the frog,
like many of its kind, is in the telling.
So whether it is captured in a blog,
weird fonts all over, never mind the spelling,
or in a leather-bound, expensive print,
an introduction from a noted author,
inside a text, font small enough to squint,
how dare he, nervy upstart, to betroth her,
or worse yet, in a ridiculing meme,
like what a couple, right? A likely story,
a perfect illustration of the theme,
all from an ancient, ageless allegory,
they wallow in their willingness to miss,
that sometimes, the whole story is a kiss.

Your poem is a stream of anxiousness,
the AI critic tells me, nonchalantly.
You iterate, regurgitate, digress,
and generally, let me put it bluntly:

you don't actually say a single thing,
ad noseum, that hasn't been repeated.
Not only do your stanzas fail to sing -
they crawl and grovel, maudlin, defeated,

best relegated to a dustbin of
their brethren, or better yet, a fire,
since that, at least, will warm the air above,
and no, you cannot, will not get much higher,

though I'll admit your rhymes are pretty good…
Perhaps it's just that you're misunderstood.