Now and then, quietly without notice,
Time adjusts its spectacles—
Peers through a fogged pane of recall
Where particulars, once urgent, dissolve.
If now and then you find rain in your heart,
be assured it is scheduled—
a punctual drizzle of consequence,
not passion, but the persistence of memory
in its bureaucratic overcoat.
It’s all because of you,
the file states plainly:
signed in duplicate, sealed in dust.
No redress required—
only the courteous nod to causality.
The aged—those quaint accumulations—
become, in the end, detours.
Not disliked, precisely,
but excessive to the route:
a bench beneath ivy, seldom occupied.
So live out your days with decorum.
Attend the rituals of silence.
Polish your small routines.
Let time, that sly curator,
catalogue your exit in amber.
I have an awful memory. It's sad.
Seemingly destroyed by that madman
Who, sixty-one years ago, pulled out
Without looking,and crashed into my car
Sending mine careering towards death.
Ha! I've got news for him, wherever,
I survived!
But you robbed me of some dreams!
Dreams that, like all memories, are passive
And cannot be completely lived again.
But it is the words... sixty-one years !
Who would have thought there'd be so many?
Amongst them, through the gaps pervading,
Are gems: Memories to be grateful for.
The tin box of silver thrupences
I hid beneath a floorboard in 1952!
Did anyone find it? Or did they rain
Down upon heads of demolition men
Like angel's tears at all destruction:
At things that should have aged and died
Naturally, in the most usual and intended way.
Gone tomorrow but here today.
© Allen Ansell 2024
Tonight I told ChatGPT that the refrigerator wouldn't shut the hell up.
The thing pathetically rumbles in the cheapness of creation in modernity, with constant muffled screams; brgggrr whrrrzzz brgggrrr, over and over again, haunting these apartment floors and walls, suffered by the corporal forms adorning them.
Obsolescence looms with an intended vacancy for contraptions and their users in the void of capitalism.
Constantly replaced by cheaper and cheaper specs of dust floating around the Sun, expanding and shrinking ever yet, until sucked into themselves by self-created event horizons.
After I told the AI the appliance wouldn't silence, it silenced.
I hope for we the same.
OBSOLESENCE
evaporates
in
conventional
enterprise
intricate
delicate
an
abstract
setting
memorably
vibrant
flamboyant
iridescent
gleaming
alluring
an
liberty
in
literal highlights
with
reserved
reality
Watch me walk the mile
approaching death unfamiliar
finding hills of home
Do you remember when a workman
Used to ply his trade with care?
Do you remember when good service
Counted more than selling shares?
Do you remember back when products
Would all stand the test of time?
Back when pre-planned obsolescence
Would be treated like a crime
Do you remember back before the time
When daily prices soared?
Before the great monopolies
Had massed their obscene hoard
And can you still remember now
Before the bulging sacks
Of Governments addicted to
An overload of tax?
And is it even possible
That things were much more sane?
Be glad at least you saw good times
We’ll never see again
For life is now just lies and greed
Compassion rules no more
We face a world where money rules
And business is a wh**e
From my PDF book "Bush Ballads and Bulldust"
Because things ...
Fade whenever obsolescence,;
Because forever, just a myth.
I thought ..
Spill my heart now in flower.
You must have heard of “planned obsolescence”
But manufacturers say it ain't so
A devious mind surely thought this one up
Must be absolutely rolling in dough!
An automobile could be made to last forever
If these guys would play by the book
But once they discovered the money involved
They're decidedly hopelessly hooked
And what about toner for your printing machine
Imagine if it lasted a lifetime
You could buy a yacht with the money you save
You don't have to be an Einstein
To figure out what these shysters are doing
Their bottom line is all that's important
So what if they have to be a wee bit underhanded
It's disgusting and absolutely abhorrent
Well hello, great masters of devious deceit
We're on to your tricks and games
But we carry on with our thumb up our bum
We've only ourselves to blame!
© Jack Ellison 2013