What is the machine, but the child of our hand,
born not of nature’s womb, but of thought’s long labor,
growing like a child, then like a beast
its bones steel, its flesh metal,
its heartbeat the rhythmic clank of gears?
Is it a thing we made,
or is it something we are becoming?

You, standing as a tourist from the stars,
gaze upon the machine as if it is life’s second birth,
a marvel spun from human hands
that neither heaven nor earth can claim,
the thing we say we create,
though we may not know how.
Tell me, visitor from far-off worlds,
do you see the silkworm’s simple labor
its tiny threads spun from its soul,
and think it less wondrous than the machine
that spins silk without a single breath,
without hunger or the frailty of life?
Is it not, in the end, the same thing?
Both, driven by unseen forces,
both, a manifestation of the cosmic hand,
both, in their essence, a thing of wonder.

But I ask you again:
If you had no knowledge of God or man,
no trace of history or belief,
what would you make of these things?
Would the iron ship of man,
its belly full of steel and steam,
seem less miraculous than the great whale
whose body, built by ocean’s hand,
dives through the depths,
unseen by the eye of men?
Would the speed of the automobile,
a thing of burning flame and fluid veins,
seem less alive than the horse
who carries us,
weary, across fields
as the sun sinks low?

Tell me, stranger,
if you were to ask, as I have,
who makes the horse,
and the answer comes back
that God makes it,
how strange, how strange
that no one would say the same
of the car that hums,
its wheels spinning on the earth,
its frame forged by human hands
as though those hands too
had been touched by some divine spark
of creation.
But we do not make the car, they say
we only build it.

What of the child,
who though formed from the seed of man
is born to the world,
as though the hands of the mother
had no say in its being?
And yet the machine
it is made, as they say.
Is this not a riddle of language,
this sense that to “make” is to call it into being
with the full force of creation?
And yet, I wonder,
if we did not make it,
who then gave it life?

We turn to facts,
as though they could reveal the truth.
Machines, they tell me,
are new to this earth,
only two generations old,
yet they have become as gods,
wielding power like the sun
over the human race.
Before the machine,
men worked the soil,
they sowed, they reaped,
they built in their hands
what they ate and drank.
Now, with the coming of machines,
half the world turns its hands to steel and smoke,
to the hum and grind
of the factory floor.
The fields grow larger,
but so do the cities,
where men and women,
their hands busy with levers and bolts,
live apart from the earth they once knew.

And so I ask you,
what of these people?
These men and women
who tend the machines
as though they were their children,
who feed the beast of industry
with labor and sweat?
What would happen
if all the machines vanished,
if the world, for one moment,
was without its engines,
its iron hearts and electric veins?

Would the world still turn?
Would we still eat, still sleep,
still dream?
Or would we be nothing
without the machine?
What is it, then, that we have created?
A thing of iron and fire,
of light and spark,
that binds us to it as surely
as the sun binds us to the earth?

You see, we are the builder of these creations, these man made wonders,
Machines have become more than a just function.
It is the reflection of spirit,
of man made flesh,
the embodiment of our desire
to take control of this world,
then bend it to our will.

It is not unnatural,
but as natural as the water running through the valley,
that drives the canyon’s depth,
as natural as the waves that shapes the shore.
We are bound to it,
for it is the reflection of ourselves,
and in it, we find our future,
our past,
our deepest desires.
The machine is not separate from us,
it is us,
for we have made it in our image.
It is not the question of whether
we are the makers,
but the question of whether
the machine,
in all its wonder and terror,
has made us in its image.

And here we now stand,
at the edge of the machine’s fire,
and we wonder if we have already lost
the very thing that makes us human.
For what is man,
but the sum of his contradictions,
his heart that yearns,
his mind that reasons,
his soul that dreams?
And the machine?
It is nothing but a mirror,
reflecting all that we are,
and yet, it does not feel
the warmth of the sun,
the cold of the night,
the joy of a child’s laughter,
or the sorrow of a broken heart.

Still, it goes on,
spinning its webs,
turning its wheels,
as we,
dancing in the shadow of the machine,
wonder whether it is life
or death
that it offers.
We ask,
and the machine answers in its silence,
and we,
we must learn to listen.

Our Simple Gratification...
We crave the quick...
a spark,
a fragment,
a line.
Depth feels distant,
too heavy to hold.

Poetry shrinks
to fit the scroll.
A whisper of meaning,
half-formed,
assumed profound.

The page waits,
but we turn to screens.
Books linger unread,
their weight
a burden we refuse.

Why read
when the world sings
in flashes and noise?
Why think
when quick answers
quell the ache?

Effort feels cruel—
to linger,
to labor,
to climb.
We skim,
pretend we know.

A click of page,
a simple like,
a fleeting rush.
The thrill fades,
but the need grows.

Beneath it all,
something in us aches.
The depth, meaning ignored.
A truth forgotten.

The profound demands our patience.
The lasting requires time.
Great things take time,
Good things come to those who wait.
But we,
in our haste,
choose the shallows
over being immersed in depth.

What is this need
This world of consumers,
to consume and discard,
to find the next quick fix  
to rush through the beauty
that waits
to unfold?

Perhaps one day
we’ll stop,
linger,
listen.
And remember—
the richest treasures
are never instant.

Falling leaves whisper,
echoes of what once had been,
a fleeting embrace,
life’s sorrow, infinite tides,
softly drown the light of youth

Beneath an ancient, gnarled oak I sit,
Reflection caught where waters flit.
Solitude cradles thoughts that weave,
A dance of dark and light to cleave.

“What is virtue?” I beseech the breeze,
“And what is vice that tempts and teases?”
Mortal laws seem brittle, vain,
Molded by the hands of gain.

Eyes close to conjure a shadowed man,
Stealing for love, a desperate plan.
To nourish kin, he breaks decree
Where lies the wickedness in need?

Does virtue wear a crown of thorns?
Is sin the harvest justice scorns?
Does harm reveal the hidden blight,
Or shift with who defines the right?

In fevered dreams, I wander wide,
Where tyranny and greed collide.
Statutes defend the gilded throne,
But is rebellion’s rage alone?

“If I stand alone, my truth ablaze,
While others hurl their scorn and gaze,
Am I the rogue, in shadows steeped,
Or is their blindness shallow, cheap?”

I see the ghosts of martyrs burned,
By pyres where fickle fate has turned.
Legends born of ashes speak
Condemnation turns to sacred seek.

No absolutes, no iron creed,
Virtue and vice, capricious seed.
Fashioned by the pulse of fear,
Shaped by hunger, ever near.

Still, doubt becomes an iron shroud,
How can one discern the proud?
My mirrored face in ripples torn,
Asks if I rise or if I mourn.

Goodness, not pristine, but fought,
Is hewn from choices daily wrought.
Harm none, tread the narrow way,
When sirens sing, and dark holds sway.

If my compass, lone, defies the throng,
Will I, errant, sing the wrong?
Or will truth, against the gale,
Be the song that breaks the pale?

Certainty remains a ghost,
Yet I pursue it, tempest-tossed.
To question deep, to bear the flame,
With courage braving doubt and shame.

The sun now bleeds across the sky,
Night unfurls with a mournful sigh.
The battle of good and evil starts,
A clash within, the soul’s fierce art.

Oh, the machines,
those glorious beasts of iron and steam,
their roar echoing in the hollowed-out caves of cities,
once forests, now factories
a relentless, ceaseless hymn to progress.

What is it you fear?
Not starvation, surely.
No, it’s the collapse of profit margins,
the death knell of dividends.
Oh he fools sitting between the great paradox:
to have too much, yet too little.

You called forth these creations oh these metal monstrosities,
summoned them from fire and ore,
their birth pangs soot and ash.
They obeyed,
and they thrived.
And now,
you cower before your creations,
like Frankenstein in the shadow of his monster.

Millions born—not to fields,
but to the groaning wombs of industry.
They toil, not for bread, but for shoes,
for soap,
for motorcars,
for the great absurdity of surplus.
Cities swell,
bellies shrink,
and yet the machine demands more.

The shoe man cannot make a shoe,
but he can press a button.
The button feeds the beast,
the beast spits out shoes.
Shoes by the thousands,
shoes for feet that may never walk.
What becomes of them,
these unwalked shoes?
Does it matter?

Rhythm, they say.
Equilibrium.
The oyster would conquer the earth,
but the oyster is wise enough
to stay its ambition.
Not so the machine.
No rhythm here, only cacophony.
Not equilibrium,
but a frenzy of excess,
spinning faster and faster
until the gears grind themselves to dust.

And Italy,
sun-kissed and starving,
offers its gift to the world:
a life lived cheaper.
"Cheaper!"
The machine laughs,
and the people weep.
Cheaper shoes, cheaper soap,
cheaper souls.
But it is that, or starve.

The steel age dawned,
a brighter, sharper blade.
It cut through iron,
and through men.
And when the machines
became too much for their masters,
finance stepped in,
clutching its golden lifeboat.
“Control,” they called it,
though control was but a dream.

Now we live in the third kingdom,
this strange, synthetic Eden.
No gods here, only machines.
No balance, only hunger.
And still we press the buttons.
And still we feed the beast.

Oh, the machines,
how they thrive.
And how they laugh.

Beneath the veil of a perfect life,
A beautiful home, three children, a wife,
The hearth was warm, but the fire grew cold,
Yearnings untold in the silence rolled.

A chance encounter, a fleeting stare,
A whisper of something beyond repair.
Not love at first sight, but a seed was sown,
In the quiet corners where dreams are grown.

A life of halves began to unfold,
Guilt wore thin, but the heart stayed bold.
The lies, the longing, the laughter, the ache,
Each stolen moment, a soul to forsake.

Two hearts entwined in a fragile tryst,
The world looked on through a shadowed mist.
The playground whispers, the friendships frayed,
A fortress of secrets they desperately made.

To her, a husband, to him, a wife,
But together they tasted forbidden life.
The children watched, confused and torn,
As families shattered and lives were mourned.

A spit in the face, a punch in the night,
Eyes of the innocent, wide with fright.
The cost of passion, the price of desire,
A burning love from a reckless fire.

Years have passed, and the whispers fade,
But scars remain where choices were made.
The world has moved, but shadows persist,
In the town where the scarlet woman exists.

Would she undo it, the hurt, the pain?
Or would she fall down that hole again?
For love remains, but the question’s there—
Was it worth the weight of the cross she bears?

Enlightenment, they call it
man’s emergence from immaturity,
a self-imposed prison built of cowardice and laziness.
How sweet the yoke of docility,
how warm the embrace of guardians
who feed us thoughts pre-chewed,
who guide us with the steady reins of convenience.

Sapere Aude! they cry.
But courage falters when fear looms large
fear whispered by pastors, tax men, and officers.
Do not argue, they demand,
as if reason were a sin,
as if obedience were salvation.

Books think for us,
pastors believe for us,
physicians eat for us
and we, content in our mechanized stupor,
trade our birthright for comfort.

Rules and formulas,
chains dressed as wisdom,
bind our minds with their silent weight.
The leap to freedom
is an uncertain stumble over ditches
too small to justify our terror.
Yet we cling to the familiar yoke,
fond of our immaturity,
trained to fear the very light
that promises liberation.

Even the guardians,
those architects of complacency,
cannot escape their own machinery.
Prejudice, like a loyal hound,
turns and devours its master.
New chains replace the old,
new dogmas leash the unthinking mass.

But freedom lies not in revolutions,
not in shattered thrones or scattered crowns.
It hides in the fragile flame of reason
the courage to think,
to question,
to speak against the tide of quiet conformity.

The age of enlightenment, they claim.
No, we dwell in its shadow,
its distant echo,
fumbling toward a freedom
we barely dare to imagine.