Best Transistors Poems
I: In Rhyme
when the world had no headsets
the sunbathing crowd
fell asleep to the sounds of
transistors played loud
while the deckchairs and windbreaks
kites, beach balls and more
formed the stripes, lines and circles
that painted the shore
and the longer I walked
on the sand to that sea
the more the sea seemed
to get further from me
and the crunch in my mouth
was that one grain of sand
in the sandwich I ate
with my sand covered hand
while the lemons and melons
and plums I'd watch spin
would stop short of a cherry
one click from a win
and the postcards we sent
from the end of the pier
were of blue skies and donkeys
and "wish you were here".
II: In Free Verse
from the end of the pier
through the stiff breeze
and spindrift
I can still hear the tunes
of the promenade bands
and I can still see the stripes
of the deckchairs and windbreaks
and the box kites
and beach balls
that painted the shore
and I can still taste
the butter
- warm like the canned ham
and the crunch of that sand
in the sandwich I had
and I can still hear the djs
laughing and talking
spinning hits of the sixties
from transistors
played loud
and I can still smell the onions
frying wild in the fairground
to the sound of the claxons
and the lemon. click. orange. click. melon.
click. click.
and I can still breathe the deep smoke
swirling in sand dunes
from the benson and hedges
and
player's no.6
and I can still see those grown ups
staring at mirrors
- their bodies distorted
like the dreams
they once had
today on the pier
the rain that's now falling
falls from a same sky
on a same sand
and same sea
and a
same
me
- yet this air
this air
is not the same air
as that air I
once
breathed.
Deep within the machine that I write on
is a poem waiting to hatch. So I will
write on each evening, even at dawn,
in the early light. I will write on till
the day I can get in there among
the transistors and electrical gates
and speeding like Tron along the long
electrical pathway toward secret fates
and hidden knowledge I find the Holy Grail
of poets, a pattern of rhyme and words
so compelling that I can't wait to tell
it to all that I know and even the birds
will come from the sky to listen and mark
me a worthy peer to the robin and the lark
Vacuum tubes made a radio too big.
The huge size was something I didn't dig.
That created a problem that was easy to see.
I could not carry a radio around with me.
Besides, the tubes burned out too frequently.
They also wasted big amounts of electricity.
For convenience sake, something had to be done.
Out came a new invention, and the battle was won.
With transistors, radios were made in a much smaller size.
Portability was something we could now realize.
With one hand, we could hold a receiver to our ear.
There were many broadcasting AM stations to hear.
So went the everyday course of history.
That was just a little tidbit of my memory.
Transistors fizz
Electrons bustle
As robots claim
The daily hustle
The hinges creak
The oil of words
Is missing from
The mindless herds
They oft parade
With heads bowed low
Quite frankly,
Nowhere else to go
As hooked in tasks
In ruts with traction
Replace the normal
Human faction
Robots make robots
Or so I'm told
They replicate
The lies they're sold
Perpetuating
All that manic
In ways that seem
Somewhat satanic
The robot wars
Are not to fear
Just realise that they
Are here
Dispense with screen
Release your mind
In un-robotic ways
You'll find
The beauty of
The world around
When eyes you lift
Will soon be found;
Through trees and rain
Bare feet on grass
A world machines
Can ne'er surpass
The pores of life
Should breathe it in
Beguiled no more
By wars of tin.
Power in the night time
flowing down those pole wires,
bless electricity!
your breakers not thrown,
bright light for everyone to see,
bless electricity!
armature moves,
electro-mechanical,
bless electricity!
tesla coil fires,
transistors begin switching,
bless electricity!
amplifier energy,
music notes play,
bless electricity!
And so it came to pass
as I raised a bourbon glass
and tossed a bolt of fire down my throat;
the ash from cigarettes
glowed as dying suffragettes,
chained to wrists of every weeping, wailing ghost.
A thirst I could not slake
was just icing on the cake,
as the closing bells resounded in the night;
every thought was dank and weary,
every eye was red and bleary,
every virgin born again without a blight.
Transistors crackled sound
from a cavern in the ground,
satisfaction blaring tinny and distorted;
time expanded then it shrank
with every mouthful that I drank
and the womb of reason shrivelled and aborted.
How transmissions swelled and swam
through the downing of each dram,
until the floor lay as a most inviting bed;
how I loved her very bones
and how I loved the rolling stones,
how I loved the old gods who were almost dead.
Sat here in the Gwesty Bach
with rock and roll and Mrs Plath
wielding firebrands of culture round my head,
how I loved her I admit,
every semblance, every bit,
how I loved the old gods who were almost dead.
“I am in a desert place in my life
I had this dream the other night:
Comfort came to me in two forms
Dark and Light
Remembrance and Anticipation
There was a sweet taste,
Not on my tongue but in my heart
And a soft touch soothing
But sublime
My mind saw this scene from two angles
Left and Right
I perceived a choice between two women
One I have known before
The other I would know
I was standing
My back to a wall, facing an open room
From my left Dark approached me
She put her face to my face
And her body right up against my body
As we sank to the floor kissing
It was odd—but familiar.
From my right came Light
(Dark had already gone)
Light put her face to my face
And her body against my body
As we sank to the floor kissing
And it was right
Each consuming the other.”
-------------------------------------------
Dark is a woman I knew—years ago
Light is a woman I had yet to know
Dark needs no light, for her countenance seen
Dark is lit up by my fond memory
To see Light I’d need hope, and it came in a vision
It took a great while, retrospect acquisition:
Committed recall to the blank white of paper
Returned to my eyes again, many years later
Gave chance to bestow, my mind reels at the means
The future made known to the man, it would seem
No notes from the future, squeezed backward through time
Piggybacked upon muons*, the old paradigm
It came by cigar with some gulps o’ the brandy
Wouldn’t suffer invention, no technology handy
Through membrane not diodes, transistors or chips
Premonition the cargo, time-transient ships
Time seeps and flips back--bits of data it brings
Knowledge bestowed in ethereal** dreams
The upshot of this story? Light’s my destiny
And I’m happy to say that her name is Tammy.
*The time traveling muon
**extremely delicate and light in a way that seems too perfect for this world
The decade that left a mark in the history of universe vast
Resounding cries surround of the world war and the cold war gross
Men shipped across waters and women work to save their precious
Hiroshima and Nagasaki destroyed for mere testing of nuclear bombs
Several innocent lives lost to douse the undying need of nations
Of the Holocaust words can’t describe, worse than hell the mass assault
Writhing in chambers of gas they died, men, women and children not spared
Gory years of unshed tears, which mankind wish will not recur
It was a decade of discoveries, and advancement in knowledge great
Penicillin a powerful cure and computers of essence here
Transistors and holography, discoveries vast and new
Superman was given birth, and mobile phones invented
Such was the years of the forties old and dark truth does it behold
A lingering pain in the memories stays not forgetting the findings new.
© Nadiya (14 Feb '15)
Electricity harnessed inside,
reproduced thin dimensions,
does a computer chip comprise.
Analog, digital and mixed signal devices,
are the classifications these can reach,
thousands, millions of transistors within minimal sizes.
The chips and integrated circuits find home,
with conductive wiring spun,
on circuit board's copper and electric roads.
Transistors are the key, they come in many types,
considered among the greatest of inventions,
they are the chips brain, and power many a device.
Resisters are placed to prevent bridging effects,
the metallic surfaces are bound,
with solder, an alloy of tin and lead.
Capacitors store energy, pins carry a current,
through the ovens they travel,
sometimes infrared lamps play the furnace.
In 1960 this technology matured,
but chips are not restricted,
to this process, some utilize wafers.
For wafers, silicon is the canvas,
on which the portrait is painted,
low material costs and good temperature ranges to manage.
Many layers make up a wafer's scheme,
it's silicon and aluminum are gray,
but refracted light gives way to reds, blues, yellows and greens.
"Etching" is the process,
of at least two layers of electronically interconnected wafers,
mounted one at a time, cut and polished.
Inexpensive creations, roll out the line,
like a newspaper, churning out new wafers,
instead of one at a time.
The circle takes shape to help prevent brakes,
to fit in as many chips as possible,
and machines can handle them easier this way.
Look close into the heart and observe,
that human mind behind the creation,
has left us a mark of his work.
Be wary dear chip, for though you make possibilities infinite,
with your uses many, and speed fantastic,
it can prove ill, pushing those limits.
In 1956 this tool rose from the mind of man,
perfected in the 1980's, it still gains momentum,
to think, it hails from the humility of sand.
It now can be found in many everyday things,
from computers to cellular phones and cars,
and most likely whatever our future might bring.
All is written by the same hand;
Our God is the same God,
Who is everything,
Who is nothing.
Jesus and Buddha sought the same thing;
All major religions are the same
But different cultural aspects
Make descriptions that are hard to cling.
I may be crazy,
But I believe God has been trying to contact me of late;
It is all in MY cards along with our imminent fate.
God is not so special,
But there is some message
I was supposed to decode and know;
The message is occluded
Like footprints after the new fallen snow.
The message still eludes me
As the voice gets more and more clear;
The voice makes me stronger
And reminds me I have nothing to fear.
It's meandering on the edge
Of Bob Marley's One Love
But that’s just the tip of the iceberg,
The fingertips in the glove.
"One mind there is,
But under it two principals contend."
Light or dark, good or bad,
We choose to commend or offend.
You make it up as you go;
Reality is a mold of what is real;
It's all in your head;
You are mistaken what you feel.
Lao Tzu, Confucius and Elijah,
Moses, Krishna and Mohammed,
Were transistors from One Heaven,
Visionaries of what the world could be,
Interested in one main task,
setting the soul free,
As God whispers lightly in my ear,
"There is no you...there is only me."
-Joseph DeMarco
All The Ghosts
Families hushing
Around crackling transistors,
Like the sound of rushing
And muffled whispers,
And all the ghosts enter
Through a heart-shaped door
Where a nervous presenter
Is announcing war.
Post cards and kit bags
Are strewn in the hall,
Their tears and nametags
Says it all,
And waving goodbye
To their husbands and sons
Are the wives who will cry
For the enemy guns.
Marching tin soldier,
Like a puppet, a toy,
Not much older
Than someone's little boy,
All the ghosts mothers
And all the ghosts wives
Dream under covers
Far from their lives.
A brave volunteer,
An unwilling conscript
Toast the same fear
In fields of conflict,
"To the bittersweet irony
Of life and death"
They breathe, admiringly,
The enemies breath.
When words left unspoken,
To our heroes, are said,
Some return broken
And some return dead,
Where a million hearts grieve
As they are laid to rest
And all the ghosts leave
Through holes in their chest.
© RJVHorton2015
Those days are gone, set
afloat upon waves of air-
that in which we dreamed, for we
were dreamers...adrift in the water
that took us to wherever
the currents flowed-
into weedy patches-
weedy and twining like our minds,
like ivy vines on cobblestone walls,
always reaching and climbing
further into the clouds, swirling like
the streams we floated down.
But our youth is lost, as are the
summer days which grew cool,
stolen by the autumn breeze.
Oh,we still have those scenes,
leave-takings into yesteryear,
drifting along on those lazy, black tubes-
sunning upon the dam 'til
our skin baked a golden brown.
Those staticky transistors were never
fine-tuned, but the songs we knew
word for word, and the notes flew
high, swallowed by the blackbirds
gliding in the warm summer sky.
We walked a sash of dusty road,
with Duke dashing ahead, sniffing
grass and daffodils, on point for squirrels
and such, as he was the littoral keeper.
Now the pup has aged, and he hurts
as he circles his spot to lie, but nothing
has changed, really- except our bodies...
for our eyes still see ourselves as youth
reaching toward that summer sky.
lest ye seek alms
with outfaced palms
just imagine
how the lantern shone
against the knees of Archelaus,
and lit up the check-board pattern
of the eleemosynary trousers
Fatigued civilian attires reasonable rhyme
challenging readers to dare themselves
question yours truly what ranks as
unleashing trademark punishing crime.
Words worth more'n fine spun gold
courtesy those considering themselves literate,
perhaps recipients of countless laurels extolled,
nevertheless mediocre (ha) logophile
crafts poem(s) inducing scold.
Dire straits force me to abide
the law of self preservation
and espouse with permission granted
by Bedrich Smetana
to abscond with bartered bride
think infamous American robbery team
Bonnie and Clyde
responsible for a 21-month
crime spree from 1932 to 1934
as analogous nefarious
transgression in league with human
author of mine verse, thus thee decide
to befriend bipedal hominid,
who scours earthwide
(and if necessary extending search
beyond outer limits of twilight zone,
where dark shadows
slink along the edge of night)
for fine prairie home companions
ideally from Lake Woebegone,
or outliers with documentation falsified
turning to humble *****sapien
as their spiritual guide,
he will be game and willingly surrender
mine Yankee doodling dandy buttucks,
his posterior gluteus maximus hide
if he falls short of promise
to bring webbed wide world bliss
witnessed as emasculation
toward himself intensified
cuz truth be told
interpersonal connections
allow, enable, and provide
kinetic, opportunistic, rhapsodic,
and universalistic joyride.
All decked out like one base 2 ace
of spades, or king of hearts
traveling at lightspeed thru cyberspace
traveling as binary unit with amazing grace,
the zeros flickering like a moonface
hopscotching between nodes uptrace
sing journey across the Internet.
Many a favorite YouTube tutorial venue
represent virtual re: digital haunts I review
to bolster pulling myself up by bootstraps
such sites out of webbed wide world
include basic digital electronics,
computer networking fundamentals,
how transistors work, plus
miscellaneous other tidbits.
For a man....
A calendar marks fifty years
since an audacious mission,
a rare moment of global unity,
a leap forward.
But there is no leap, no grand
accomplishment without small steps.
Before female computers
slide rule math was machined
into mechanical gears,
then encoded in ones and zeroes,
first in cards and vacuum tubes, then transistors,
now microchips and nanobots.
Before Saturn rolled out,
behemoth pointing to the heavens,
Gemini made numerous flights, orbiting
our pale blue dot.
Before Gemini, Mercury reached
tentatively into space.
From the Wright brothers at Kitty Hawk
to Goddard's experiments, each step
expanded our knowledge and horizons, allowing
Armstrong, Aldrin and Collins to strap in
to the world's most powerful rocket.
Accelerating to seventeen thousand
miles per hour to park above
earth
before translunar injection,
navigating two hundred thirty nine thousand
miles through black void, men of Apollo
took a giant leap forward
with one more step.
Engineers turned theory into rockets.
Test pilots turned astronauts flew
them - and us - to the moon.
And we take planes to the edge,
pushing boundaries, until
we turn the calendar
one day and marvel
at a new world, far
from that first
small
step.
- A tribute to the astronauts, scientists, engineers and workers who expanded our horizon in 1969; written for the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing. The "we" in the poem refers to pilots who compete in the International Aerobatic Club (IAC) as well as IMAC, the International Miniature Aerobatic Club. Published in the IMAC newsletter, Vol. VII, 2019.
I saw your light deep in the valley of my mind
Against the backdrop of fecund canopy stillness
With Dragon trees and other pines of Dagon
Shivering wet from the Spring
Yielding to June
Band warming Day,
as if the rush of Sunlight beaming
waywards
Couldn't hold the Summer aways
And New Cones sauntering
on the Shadowed Path
of my youthful heart
charged suddenly with Ambient light
glowing all around
fauna and shrub
fern and lilly
canticle of dahlia
and Mercury Rose
All Scents Sweetly culling
rivers of light
and the natural synthesis of Pine
Percolating from dust to dust
Like transistors of chlorophyll
or programmed scents from
the Maker
Rivers of light
running upwards
towards the Awaiting
Sun, an orb of light
And Nature's Full Symphony
A collection of Saintly notes
Melodious Larks and Sparrows
giving Birth to the First Ocean of light
the Sun Itself
The Final Sea
Suspended in Waves of Time shimmering
waves of Light
and Flowing towards Aethiru and from Aethiru
Until Time itself should gather its Eons of Unfolding
Memory and
Becomeas Bound as the Ocean
To Unwind Yet Again
The Mystery