John Anderson Poet Lyric

Notes About The Poem

'The Giant' painted by American artist NC Wyeth in 1923.

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Cloud Dreams have had their Day

Imagination leaves the syllabus, far too soon,
eclipsed by networking, killing the daydreams at noon.
The child who saw fanciful kingdoms up in clouds in the air
is taught, by well-meant rulers, not to wander way up there.

Calling one a 'dreamer' is common in speech,
It mocks the inner thoughts, which only dreams can reach.
They drag childishness back to where reality is framed.
where people weigh worth in facts, and fantasy is shamed.

The very young begin by seeing things in cloudy skies,
beyond the cumulus, to the nebulous scenes, in their eyes.
Yet by their middle teens, those realms die, grow dim,
as screens and AI networks rewrite, prune, and trim.

Once, people prized creativity as a valuable worthy end.
now added guardrails constrain how much minds may bend.
For now to imitate or emulate is seen as the only goal,
and free open expression is forever denied its role.

We call this dithering "play", as though it were a toy,
and not the source of insight, of hope, and of joy;
as though the mind at large, unruly and unled,
is a mere idle pastime, inept and silly, when not spoon fed.

Now the nanny-mind state, of patterned code,
cannot dream beyond its borrowed AI road.
It cannot hope, because it cannot feign,
the worlds that a free imagination, can sustain.

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