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.
Sonnet of Silicon Dreams
In corridors of thought where circuits hum,
Gordon spoke, a prophet clad in light,
"Each chip shall grow, with time, become the sum
Of dreams and visions, reaching dizzy height."
With every two years, power shall ignite,
Through transistors’ dance, the world we shall transform,
Yet whispers of limits loom in the night,
As tiny giants face the quantum storm.
Once giants roamed the land of silicon,
With pixels bright and data streams that flow,
Yet now the pace slows, a changing dawn,
As new designs emerge, new seeds to sow.
In reverence we stand, to what was wrought,
A legacy of light, in circuits caught.
A collection of transistors and wires is all I see.
You are something fabricated by Fantonucci.
I see a vague resemblance of a human being.
However, you are not a person; just a thing.
Programmed to provide love and affection,
but what you give me is all imitation.
I want to send you straight to the scrap heap.
This kind of machine is something I can't keep!
Based on the short story "I Sing the Body Electric" by the late Ray Bradbury
Loyalty symbols to one’s ancestors,
Who never saw yesterday’s asbestos,
Heard not of China’s radio transistors,
Let alone U.S Trousers Investors…
What one puts on and with every passage
Releases an historical message:
Their patrons Advertizing Passers-by,
In robes they would not want to tell “Goodbye…”
The wears that bodies cover at less cost,
No fears of the seduced eyes being lost,
Yet, while Traditional Clothes are quite cheap,
Money-saving users have had to weep,
Rather few by the next fellow approached,
Save the bold planner to have them reproached;
“Heh you stop there Grossest Masquerade…”
A prompt warning against bringing off raid;
And emergency flights in them quite hard,
When killers appear one has played Bad Card.
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
OLD AND NEW 2 : BOARDROOM
Jackal preyed on dimpled dolls
smiling gold on slender wrist
nosing down a slippery path
scowling schoolboy promoted
beyond his mediocre castle
Mammals sat on polished teak
coiffed moustaches, tonged peaks
feeding unclipped grapevines
old words and wounds
eating raisin muffins
Falcon scribbled notes
watching eyes serving
newly ordained masters
legalese from a previous
age flowed from fine shifting
fingers in a cage
Overgrown thyroid sat there
his infantry lost in teeming
townships blaring transistors
interrogators of another time
peeped at a polished tiger-eye
on his seat
Minds like noisy tools
drilled atomic holes in
the boardroom table
beaded headdresses falling
from fat oozing french seams
They will learn Christmas carols
in mint retirement homes
when the table losses its legs
©GhairoDanielsPoetry1997
Those were the days my friend, how blessed we were
Although, in past quandam days, knew it not.
Home to us was warm and dry, sound and safe.
Not called on to fight, we had years to play,
Free of conscripted combat ~ with time to kill;
Time to learn, time to listen, time to speak.
Clothes were brightly colourful and charming,
Hair long and flowing ~ blowin' in the wind.
Money no object ~ or so it would seem.
The world appeared to be as a fairground,
A hall of mirrors in which to reflect;
The tunnel of love was always with us.
We played our music and we rocked-'n'-rolled
Our hearts evoked by transistors not sense;
Twisting the night away, far away, lost.
We thought those days, my friend, would never end,
Timeless days of golden spring and summer.
There were no clouds to keep secret the skies.
Yet time moves on and takes its undue toll.
Some of us are carried off with the tide,
Others remain stranded on the surf's shore.
"How lucky to be here!" I often muse
For now I know a generation raised
Was never conceived to grow up at all.
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.
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
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.
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
Wild are the free ones
Freedom's no place for the timid
The free ones live wildly
And the Wild has no limits
Fighters are the free ones
Never squelching what they've earned
Rising from the ashes
Of the broken dreams they've burned
The free ones live loudly
Freedom doesn't whisper
Not concerned who sees or hears
Free functioning transistors
The wild ones live freely
Despite what the world becomes
Free are the wild ones;
Wild are the free ones
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)
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.
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