Best Data Poems
Zero One One Zero One Zero Zero One
One One Zero Zero One One Zero One
Zero Zero Zero Zero One One Zero Fun
My husband despised computer class in the 70’s.
It was all digits and blinks and beeps, and the computer was bigger than the room it was housed in
By the 80’s he was speaking computer-ease that the rest of us did not understand.
He was alive with words that made no sense to us regular folks.
He was speaking of databases, and WordStar and Fortran,
Stuff only real computer geeks know about now, and almost no one knew about back then.
I thought he had lost his mind.
Overtaken by an alien especially in his sleep
When he was speaking of Jazz, a computer program,
Hardware and software.
What in the world was software?
Our eight-year-old daughter readily got on board.
Spent four days in her room, working on a computer program
Day and night not coming up for food, shoving full trays of spaghetti and garlic bread back out under the door.
She was engrossed in this idiocy.
On the fourth day she called us all up there,
We stood by her canopy bed, staring at a dark fuzzy gray computer screen.
Wait for it she said.
And we did.
We waited and waited.
Finally a little white ball bounced across the screen. She was insanely pleased!
That is what she had been working on for four days? I am ashamed to say I did not understand
That this was the beginning of her life long career as an IT, which means
She makes more money than I will ever make,
And she speaks a language that I can barely speak.
She comes by it naturally.
My mother at the age of seventy, got a computer,
And verociously read everything about it that she could get her hands on.
She too was shoving food back out under her door.
When we came to visit, she announced with pride that she had discovered
How to eliminate her cookies.
Not the sugar cookies with icing, I hoped.
Written 10-3-2018 All Dim Ones and Zeros
Sponsor: Brahn Bailey
after ‘The waste Land’, by T.S. Eliot
I met a woman on a glitching screen,
her face a whisk of pixels and prayer.
She spoke of shattered systems and survived code,
“The cloud remembers everything,” she said, "but forgets what matters.”
A rat hurried through my feed at dawn,
past memes and headlines, each a kind of omen.
I tried to fast-forward spring,
but April clawed through my notifications anyway.
In a thread of ghost towns and tagged regret,
I noticed a cafe with no floor, only static,
A man sipped Espresso beside a socket,
charging his distress while waiting for replies.
Data rains in blasts, all prediction and pop-ups.
The Sun sets in Beta,
and we refresh the silence,
hoping for something new to load.
For then, below algorithms and ash,
a bud breaks code in cracked concrete,
muted, untagged,
but blooming still.
Transearth void,
Darkness imaginary,
Interior cosmic system captivated,
Single box frame.
Triumphant numbers,
Cloning the blackish infinite.
Mastering image star-breath.
The two,
Ones and Zeros governed.
Rush flight,
Conquering wars over the other in submitting power.
Shooting stars four & nine,
Entering,
Burning in the azimuth of symbols.
Entire data found in the palm size briefcase.
Computer smiles,
"Having all the solutions in me. Give me your best thoughts, please!"
Fingers speak of an answer by keyboard questioning.
Entering but two;
Live-
Love-
Silent pause,
Screen fuzzes white,
Spectacle light of confusion,
Crushing nonsense,
Meltdown of incomplete facts.
Up in and smoked out.
Than,
Resting in peace,
In graveyard software.
Not even Bill Gates prepared for this coming day.
Saying a little prayer from my lips.
My heart's eyes opened-
"Wow!"
Looking up,
"My God!"
"How do You still live in one piece?"
Dark clouds gathering
all world communication
privacy canceled
all congressmen asked
the forensics team to view
their hard-drive data
Puffy clouds online
Someone else's computer
Floating behind screen
So, I'm told I have 100 billion neurons
(by someone ignorant of youth's indiscretions)
each with about a thousand synapses,
to connect its own specific grandeur or fear
to a grand of other neurons and their neuroses
and all of these cadre's and feeling tentacles
are always moving - reaching - searching,
for input and an interested listener
for minute sparks of insights they may have,
maybe a few a second, and over the course of time
they begin to add up - these datum of days
Significant amounts of minutia and marvels
in my minute-to-day-to-decade-to-lifetime
collection of me, in my own Icloud of inputs
what more could a sentient mind want but
a spoonful of sugar, and some free radicals
to really open up the ol' data pipes
BIG data, is what life's all about
these days, of statistical medians and means,
trying always to crunch our cramponed boots
to the top of the standard deviation curve
and look out at all the rest of
experience below us, our own vista of life
Racks of digitals softly hum to us in our society
and like us, this evolution (perhaps) of life
abhors to throw anything back to the world
without gleaning profit or meaning from it,
no digital potato peels or binary bones tossed
without a specific mission statement satisfied
So, it's not so different today, in "modern" times
as it was back then, when chain-mailed or toga'd
or animal skinned, or just buck-naked, we took
in everything that we could as individuals,
and stored its meaning, its grief, its joy,
part of our memories stock-in-trade for
the core analytical questions of "what?" and "why?"
© Goode Guy 2012-11-16
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_data
Here I am again computer; it’s another day with me
It’s too bad you don’t have eyes so you could really see
It is actually morning, the beginning of the day
How have you been doing while I have been away
I know that you are running; I can hear your little whir
Alright, where’s my data; I saved it I am sure
You better tell me where it is; I've hunted and it’s lost
Maybe I’ll replace you: I've counted up the cost
Didn't you see the work I did or don’t you even care
Or would you like to join the trash in the garbage over there
My neighbor threw his desktop out his second story room
It landed on the driveway with a very loud caboom.
Can you hear what I am saying: don’t try to press your luck
Or you will find a brand new home in the weekly garbage truck
a brief moment of absence
no words
moved around so fast
outran traces of my past
contacts I'd amassed
with little hesitation
lost sight of situation
not stabilizing
life without compromising
'til next uprising
left holding tight to what was
searching out the next just cause
tangled up in lies
slim prospects can agonize
tear through the disguise
certainly no going back
when all planning goes off-track
some beliefs abide
because of truths which they hide
past acts they've denied
everything and nothing count
souls each taxed by right amount
my own mother's faith
premise easy to forsake
seemed too profit based
afterlife but a cheap trick
fake carrot attached to stick
relativity
defines things differently
with more symmetry
increasing agility
throughout the totality
time a state of mind
often used to try to find
nature's true design
of a mass always the same
yet constantly rearranged
where do we reside
in universe vast and wide
peer out from inside
closer to edge than center
current knowledge can't render
dark skies filled with voids
the cosmologist enjoys
and black hole destroys
this universe more or less
is chock full of nothingness
science lights the way
to where we headed these days
bits, bytes, down runways
send voyages toward Oort cloud
seeing how heavens are plowed
ride the bleeding edge
with data mining we dredge
what Einstein alleged
learning even photons bend
in order to reach their end
There is a person with more than one face
Who struggles in more than one place
Being on line one at a time
It sure can't be fine
Infecting ones data base
http://www.thehighlanderspoems.com/humour-5.php
My computer died
Lost all my information
Screaming loud feels good
With a devastating voice
To calm your mindset and change
Ironing the game to be fine
Good obsession
But elders are starving
While they are looking after the livestock
I will just scrutinize what is visible
Or am I out of context?
If it makes you forlorn
It is you who have a spot on a trail
Or if I’m wrong, correct me
Don’t let the neighbor to laugh at me
An ancient accepted wisdom
What my peers are scared to talk?
Thoughts far away
Thinking bottomless
Belief of growing up beings
The leech boasts he ends many wars
With each speech Trump’s truce total soars
His confused amount
And White House account
Are summed-up trysts with Epstein's whores
Sometimes I feel like Data
an android
an autist
binary and metal
mind over matter
Forever searching humanity
Never being able to pass through metal detectors
Having deep emotions
misunderstood
impossible to express
Questioning and inquisitive
sad without crying
happy without laughing
I feel like Data
with my green eyes
always
***
May 11, 2017
Copyright © Darren White