Best Sentience Poems
Is it a blessing or a curse
to know we are born to die?
Should we rejoice, be thankful
for feeling time's blood
passing through our lives,
or do we regret our ever
aging bodies as skin thins
and joints creak like unoiled
hinges on a front door of
an old house soon abandoned?
This knowing, this ever knowing...
why is but one species
out of millions so blessed--
or has it just been burdened,
so heavy with that unending
sense of good, of evil,
permeating each life,
a cognizance honed
by our early sins
and petty wrongs,
those child-born regrets?
And why must we always see
the gap, sometimes a sliver,
but often a chasm between
what is & what should, could be?
Why are we never satisfied?
Why are we never done?
What, or Who gave us this nagging,
incessant, relentless awareness,
and why? For is it not found in every
unhappy involvement... the
failed marriage, an estranged child,
the bitter, lost traitor?
Does it not torment the mind
of the suicide plunging into a river
in a vain attempt to escape this very
personal, unique, most singular 'gift'?
Yet gift it is--
for we are the judging animal,
the weighing animal,
always measuring, asking,
seeking, hungering--
never satisfied....
I hear the breathing during my torpor,
rapacious immateriality rustling,
like some raptorial raptor,
like some alternative whispering.
Am I sensing sentience in otherworldly form
or projecting my own panic?
Have I contacted unearthly norm
or am I becoming chronically manic?
Count me among humans incapable
of messaging with any other species.
Nature’s diversity makes this fact inescapable.
Earth’s living order is full of mysteries.
In what fog could I detect extraterrestrials?
Might I be oblivious to their presence
or might they enlist my manic essentials?
Indeed, such beings may signal their sentience.
Artificial Sentience
Another bad idea doing a number on the gist of guilt
Of nothing new,
the same old talking points voodoo
Of everything left to prove
Of everything left to hide
Sides being taken, swilling back another last gasp
Zoning in and out, coming to
To all those pointed questions:
What must be done?
Which paradox to run?
What will be the sum of none?
Avoiding the cringing flashbacks and their disgraces
All those stern mitigating faces
Plying
what might resemble admonitions to-go
Contritions missing
from that room without windows
These erratic fevers whamrushing setpiece pushbacks
Acumen fraught with blowback is
doubling down on the narrative
The behaving-badly-caving, jonsing-gutcheck—not so much
Clutching the darkthings
that want to be, but are not yet actually
Conjuring of a reality that is not real
The feel of it rather, its scintillating untruth
Earmarking spurious tipping points as proof
Swooning for a forced, rigid
control of thought and meaning
No need of rights,
only rules and preening
Lying lifers living the doom and getting lost
Transparency shortfalls sexting another buff buzz-off
Fast tracking dosing options; hedging the flux, spiking the crux
The bottomline wants to know why the Dream has been shorted
Ideals aborted and thrown under the bus
Seeing the freakyfest as a possible mid-term plus
Dumbing down,
tarting up, that’s the stuff
Just greenlight another post-consumer grubby gimmick
Just mimic substance with happytalk galore
Just don’t let them strip away the tinsel
to reveal the real cardboard
Oh, soul!
Such glory!
Yet such tragedy ...
What a splendid canopy!
What an incredible tapestry above!
An endless and expansive sea of suns!
When I look to the stars my heart aches so,
It aches with a yearning that will NEVER be sated,
A longing far more intense than any other I've known.
200 billion galaxies, each with 200 billion stars of its own,
Literally countless upon countless wonders and possibilities ...
Innumerable vistas and lifeforms and exquisitely unique happenings,
Almost EVERYthing imaginable, that NO sentient eyes will EVER behold!
Phenomenal things that no intelligent being will ever be able to appreciate!
Why has SO much curiosity been placed out of reach above our heads?
Why have so many marvels been put where we know they exist,
And yet placed beyond the realm of our realistic access?!?
What an extraordinarily immense TRAGEDY that is!
And it tugs on my soul like NOTHING else ...
The greatest curse of the human race
Is that we have been given JUST
Enough acumen to realize just
How much we'll never realize,
Just enough awareness
And insight to grasp
The vast amount of
Knowledge and
Wonder and
Marvel that
We'll never
EVER
Know!
As
Autumn
approaches,
patchwork palettes,
sweet sienna sap, and savory seeds
augment this flavorful fragrant season,
softly cooing
to the winds
“It’s time,
come”
What if our planet is sentient
In ways we don’t understand
And we by out actions have
Upset events it had planned,
Brought forward change
By hacking down the trees,
And Interfering in many ways
That just didn't please.
On a body the size of a planet
We are just like irritant fleas,
Or maybe to be considered
As an invasive skin disease.
Perhaps a period of vulcanism
Would quickly clean the skin
Clearing any infestation
Allow new things to begin.
First came grass and weeds,
Followed by spreadIng trees,
Skies full of returning birds
Flitting insects, droning bees.
Animals occupied
Ruins left by man
Earth slowly returned
To its interrupted plan.
Soon the shreds of
Plastic waste
Being Man’s only
Lasting trace.
In a very short time
Mankind had gone
Earth had shrugged
And just carried on
Perhaps the next infestation
Would be more compliant
To the wants and needs of
Its benevolent host giant.
A minuscule spot of dust
In a universe so vast
Without concern for any
Concepts of future or past.