Shoe leather sidewalks
Shadow cast skywalks
Hosts a bevy of ghosts
The long summer heat
Torch blue collar feet
Soles roasting coast to coast
Gothic museums
Gold colosseums
Unsheathes the royal wreaths
Flotsam and Jetsam
Worn Skechers gets 'em
Souls bleeding in the weeds
It keeps rolling in
soft waves slowly returning
the flotsam and jetsam
of a fading life
shredded
during a forgotten journey
seeking to follow
long erased footprints
through the ever-shifting
sands of time
Surfing the Cyber Sea without a life vest
hunting and pecking each key at best
nothing but a gyre of flotsam and jetsam
Charybdis as far as the eye can see
where once all was clean and pristine
now the dreaded AI rules the roost
with spam from unwanted advertisers
to give it an unneeded boost
culprits remaining nameless
hiding behind anonymity
who knows what they have in mind
but open the door and it's for sure
once they're in they'll rob you blind
Britain is known to have ruled the waves
at the height of its happy heyday
a worldwide web with a maritime domain
but come what may all empires fall
yet will this disinformation superhighway remain?
It's raining, it's cold
I'm afraid I'll catch a cold
I'll sip a glass of tea
To keep me warm
And a thick jacket
To cover my whole body
The rain is almost two days now
The streets are covered with water
The rivers overflowing
The cars stranded all over streets
Garbage, flotsam and jetsam floating
Busy life stop for awhile
And dull moment takeover
People freeze in awkward situation
Just messages in the ether work
The world is in quandary for awhile
And life is in the gloom for awhile.
AI is the ultimate plagiarist
mimicking patterns in human devised data.
Its models needs training on high quality data,
billions and billions of bits and bytes
of high-quality human derived thoughts and information.
But, AI output, with its hallucinations and flaws,
now has begun to flood into the data sources themselves.
Just like inbreeding,
the training becomes regurgitative,
feeding off its own output recycled.
With no way to tell the difference
between original and AI derived stuff,
the models become dumber and dumber
as each model learns from the previous one.
Rehashing the trash, disgorging, re-eating its own sick.
AI is its own Tower of Babel, the omniscient fountain of all insight, capable of all and anything, is fundamentally flawed and inbred.
AI is destined to become a rabble,
a Babel babble, incoherent, useless flotsam and jetsam.
We float amidst the flotsam and jetsam
Seemingly immune to the debris field
Moving past the invisible, the hushed,
Focused only on the we, of us
Our minds deny the truth of what we see
Refuses to face the rising of the waves
Cannot hear the crushing surfs refrain
“I’ve come again…..again…..a g a I n……”
We walk with naked feet on fresh-wet sand
Listen to the sound of stone-roll band
And wonder why it is we can’t abide
The rising of the flotsam-jetsam tides
I can see all pest
Piles of flotsam and jetsam
Users final rest.
i once stood
within my own shipwreck
blaming cruel seas
years past
flotsam and jetsam
built a driftwood home
when storms came
that ramshackle shelter
self-destructed
while i
cursed foul weather
looking outward
never seeking inward
i decried a faithless fate
unt
a blinding truth
ransacked
an unseeing mind
simply that
I ALONE
am the author
of my own life-long
melodrama
none other than me
bore this responsibility
of such a tangled
tragicomedy
I am often underused and often underestimated
a zing of a thing that often goes unheard, unseen
ginger beer is a tonic unlike me it can't be grated
a powerful root so astute, they bring from overseas
The captain gives his orders but I see you Mary Lee
sitting in your cabin drinking tea and writing poetry
flotsam and jetsam are marked on the ship, but me
I float above the rest and so I heal you, Mary Lee
The imp skipped merrily hugging his Jack Daniel
the sun was too hot so he knocked on every door
looking for a bed for him and his invisible Faneuil
she opens it a peep and finds him on the floor
Mr. Gargoyle tie askew in dire need of ginger root
"Oh Dear!" says Miss Lee, your drunk but very cute.
not for contest
How will I know if I’ve written a good poem?
Is self-assessment the best measure of its worth
Shall I seek a plethora of plaudits at random?
If it’s funny, then perhaps, laughter and mirth,
If it’s serious, I should think some reflection
Is self assessment the best measure of its worth?
Some fine poets have a particular predilection
And those poems shine, others not so much,
If it’s serious, I should think some reflection.
I believe most important is how it flows, as such
Being like a strong tide carrying flotsam and jetsam
And those poems [may] shine, others not so much.
Some poets say a poem must rhyme, yet some
Without rhyme, like blank verse, are excellent,
Being like a strong tide carrying flotsam and jetsam.
Excellence comes down to absolute raw talent,
How will I know if I’ve written a good poem?
Yet, without rhyme, like blank verse, is excellent
Shall I seek a plethora of plaudits at random?
Written July 31, 2022
The meadow is calling me with freshness galore
New leaves are popping out on the maple trees,
Small animals are stirring around once more
The scent of spring flowers floats on the breeze.
My afternoon stroll is full of wondrous adventure
Watching Mother Nature bring everything to life,
Beginning my day without criticism or censure
Walking ‘midst the pink milkweed and tall loosestrife.
The creek is running to the brim with melted snow
Washing away the autumn’s dried sticks and leaves
Where the flotsam and jetsam go, I don’t know,
But burbling sounds remind of nature’s recitatives.
I shall stop short of the woodland this afternoon
Where larger animals watch with jaundiced eye,
Not wanting to disturb the flurry of activity’s boon
Or to cause newly-nesting birds to startle and fly.
Written April 15, 2022
I came across an ancient manuscript
Long languishing in a cluttered drawer
Where hidden memories lay among
The flotsam and jetsam of my life,
And reading it I realized a forgotten time
When idealism was a guiding principle
In my way of life, when in my naivete
I was convinced I could change the world.
I had taken many bits of my life from that chest
From time to time, when frantic searching
For direction caused me to flail about
Too late, I picked up the yellowed pages just now.
written August 8, 2021
Do you strive to be poetic,
while forgetting to be a poet
Your words when forced an epitaph
to what you never said
(Villanova Pennsylvania: August, 2020)
My factory will make aeroplanes from snow and sleet, melting inside the sound of speed;
constructing houses from photographs, tissue paper and thread; Papier-mâché homes of memories.
My factory will knit schools from silk and cotton, fabrics building children from the ground up,
whilst assembling furniture from the flotsam and jetsam of parties, replacing oak with dancefloors.
My factory will fashion bridges from handprints and road signs from the feathers of birds, free to fly;
it will form spectacles within the ivory of piano keys, create walking sticks from the strings of a harp.
My factory will grow men from sunlight and women from rosebuds, nurture children in an hourglass;
forging governments from salt and sand, moulding leaders from mud and earth which will not crack.
Treading hard in a sea of lies
With anchor feet and foggy eyes,
Can we yet float another day
With no ship to take us away?
When seas were calm, we saw the shore.
With swelling seas, we see no more
Midst waves of tergiversation
That inundate our great nation.
Flotsam and jetsam next us ride,
Floating, helpless, on surging tide;
The framework of Old Ironsides
Drifts to history’s rocks abide.
Its hardy hull to wormwood turned
While loud progressive termites churned
As our silence helped drown our dreams
With flailing freedom’s gurgling screams.
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