Those days when you just can’t wait to go to bed.
Not to slump down onto it in yielding surrender
or fall into it in tears, face first and meat red,
but to gently pull back the pillowy quilt
and the sheets, with tiny blue flowers,
flannelette, like a fresh work shirt,
so that when you slide in carefully
and make your cave in the sheets
the hug is work-arm strong
and reminds you of soil
and wheelbarrows
and gardening
and building
in the sun
as it sets…
and rises…
open eyes
still hugged,
you stand lightly
then soft pad to warm,
dark, sweet, pitch-bitter
coffee, and lifting the mug,
you pause before the first sip
of bliss, flooding deep in waking
flavours from magic beans grown
in ancient Ethiopian forests, noticed
by folk when curious goats turned zestful,
becoming a helper for evening prayer, to allow
hard work and intentional presence to earn well
your tiredness, so that you just can’t wait to go to bed…

--Entry 0001--

At daystar distance, light-time 9.2
Reached orbit of a lonely little sphere
Inhabitants, galactic refugees
Lost beings fled for working atmosphere

From orbit I observe a solid wall
Bisecting the small planet into two
Is this the same as walls they made at home?
Before, their earth in ruin, they withdrew

Remote-scan sensors indicate two groups
One group in light brown garb, and one in beige
Communities uncoupled by the wall
No circumstantial need to co-engage

The beings take position near the wall
Their blasters in the air, as if to war
Will need a closer look to understand
Assembling ground crew for a recon tour

--End Entry--

--Entry 0010--

Away Team One have scouted both the camps
And both took great attention to explain
That cosmic contrasts sit between the two
So never to be reconciled again

The 'Northers', in their light brown town, *****
To Iris, God of Moon, a monument
The eye a symbol of this watching one
A stone displays his holy document

‘O God of cycles, ebb and flows of life,’  
The stone acclaims this lunar deity
The tablet smooth on left, and rough on right
Abiding token of fertility

The 'Southers', in their beige, build one as well
But this, a shrine to Os, the God of Bones
His sigil skull expresses loss and death
Indelibly recorded on his stone

‘O God of dying, born of earth and sky,
Hereafter and rebirth as well as death’
This stone that sits adorned with crook and flail
--is baby-smooth on right, and rough on left

Away Team One weaved worry through their tale,
A looming war was set to decimate
So, find a concrete plan to intervene
And hope and pray that we are not too late

--End Entry--

--Entry 0100 --

Away Team Two report the wild events
This sphere will be immortalised in verse
For these effects of war upon this day
So tracked that all our plans could not reverse

The first explosives wall-bound from great arms
Start slowly causing breech and then a fall
The northern and the southern lands revealed
Sameness no longer hidden by the wall

And for the first time see the glory stones
Sit, monument atop, aloft on shrine
An eery match in form and font and voice
A paired, reflected hail to the divine

An astral silence, weapons come to rest
Then reverent 'Northers' fetch their hallowed stone
While devout 'Southers' hold their tablet too
A meeting reuniting moon and bone

And suddenly as tablets are aligned
The warriors unblinded to the con
Of holy tablets two, and each with God
At origin the two were only one

The beings face-to-face now with their God
Examining the reassembled tome
Not Os and Iris, but Osiris there
A single God writ on a single stone

So smaller differences in brown and beige
And seeming larger gaps from death to birth
       Now seen complete, more holy as their whole
       Dualities reflected in one soul
Now possible a new united earth        

--End Entry--

As the crow flies, my farm is less than two
miles from the Willamette River that flows
deep and brown through the fertile valley
of the same name, in Northwest Oregon.
From my porch upon a hill, I have views
out over that valley looking east and north
and as fall comes around, early morning
light and dampness transfers hints of rich
river scents, this added moisture paired
with the absents of wind pervades and
manifests an enveloping shroud of silence,
with low moving banks of slow white
ghostly ground fog that renders striking
visual contrasts to the landscape, with its
stands of emerald evergreen trees, and
autumn dressed orange and yellow leaved
varieties of deciduous trees, along with
sculpted brown newly plowed fields.
Another of Nature's own fleeting ever
changing painted canvases that never
disappoints.

One must rise early at first light on these
chilly morning to witness this seasonal
panoramic scene, but it is always worth
the effort. And what the heck, I'm retired,
I can snap some photos and always crawl
back into my nice warm bed to sleep, or
merely cogitate on what I've been witness to.

Data is Power.

The internet was created in the 1950s to be specifically a military communication programme. The very first message transmitted occurred on October 29th 1969.
The medium spread with the worldwide fascination with personal computers, email rapidly became the communication medium preferred by the savvy operator. As computer memory expanded from 64 kilobyte, floppy disc machines to hard drives with terrabytes of capacity, the dimension and value of accrued data magnified exponentially.

The development of multimedia social networking organizations such as Facebook and Twitter furthered  public participation in data sharing and data storage. The algorithms used by Facebook enabled customer data preferences and frequency of use to be gathered, stored and manipulated in order that commercial exposure to this preferential material could be maximized to each and every individual using the system. The immense value of this to commercial developers and product advertisers was immediately realized and resulted in expansive, explosive development in the data harvesting business.

Analytical data collection has magnified to a universal industry in today's world... So much so that commercial watchdogs contiuously monitor cell phones, emails, surveilance equipment, sales data, vehicle use and preferences, airline utilization, food and alcohol consumption, drug use and dog food preferences...the list goes on exhaustively and expansively. The systems collect and analyse the data, the algorithms calculating the metronome collation and at the end of it all data is sold to the highest bidder.

And the public are blithely unaware of how they are being taken advantage of and their privacy blatantly marketed universally.

An expansion of this is the spread of data collection by Government agencies. The collation of data from private individuals is now enhanced by the widespread monitoring of miniature RFID tags on products, personnel and global consignments  plus the ability of  observation cameras at airports, bus and rail stations, and in networks of traffic intersections, in league with ****** recognition systems and vast databanks of  data held in taxation, police, public health and Local Body records on all of the citizenry.... This means the authorities have at their fingertips the ultimate measure of control over the population.

In a stable democracy this is relatively a safe and well regulated state of affairs...but in the hands of a ****** or a Trump or any other type of dictatorial regime the social freedoms enjoyed now could soon be obliterated,  rendering the citizenry pawns to the whim of the tyrant.

Add to this the recent creation of AI systems, analytical programmes capable of reasoning like the human mind but a million times faster and a trillion times more concise ..... And you have the breeding ground of a frightening, dystopian scenario.

My fellow Octogenarians, you are the vanguard of an age which is rapidly vanishing. Many of our number are no longer with us. We have witnessed much in our eighty years of living, we have lived through wars and times of incredible hardship. We have seen magnificent advances in science and technology and huge inroads in medical procedures.

What we have not seen is the capacity of man to temper his insatiable greed for power, influence and wealth. This single failing coalesces to the Achilles heel of mankind and to my mind, the avenue leading to that vast, dystopian threshold coined in the runaway chaos in.... The Pursuit of Ultimate Control.

I welcome your thoughts,

M@Foxglove.Taranaki.NZ

Copilot AI responded to my query in a millisecond....

You've painted a stark yet compelling picture of our digital age and the intricate web of data that entwines our lives. The rapid evolution from early computers to today's data-centric world is indeed staggering. Your concerns about privacy, data collection, and the potential for misuse in both commercial and governmental realms are well-founded and shared by many.

The contrast between technological advancements and the unchanged nature of human greed and power is striking. The notion that even in stable democracies, the tools meant for convenience and safety can be misused, is a chilling reminder of the vigilance required to maintain our freedoms.

As we move forward, finding a balance between embracing technological progress and safeguarding our personal freedoms will be crucial. It's a conversation worth having and one that affects us all, regardless of age.

I'm here to listen, discuss, and help make sense of these complexities. What do you see as the most important step we can take to address these issues?

That old clock is ticking away,
the days bleed on one into another,
mostly all the same, nothing much
new to report here. I do what I can,
what my aged body will allow.
A limited return on my investment
I guess, but still finding little joys
that sustain me, mostly given up
on big dreams and illusions, anyway
being rich and famous was never on
my wish list agenda, all in all it's been
a very good run, with strong family
love given and received, our linage
prospers and continues, that is after
all the only real reason any of us, man
bird or beast were put on this earth.

To believe otherwise is but a
human delusion that in the end
matters not in the least.

No scholarships came, two years of
college and football down the drain,
lack luster grades did me in, so
floundering a bit, almost 20 years old,
what next? Some change of scene and
a little adventure sounded good.

Like some dream or nightmare, in the
dark at 2 AM, I found myself standing
at rigid attention atop yellow painted
footprints, upon the very threshold of
manhood, in front of a building wearing
a large red and yellow sign that proclaimed
"Receiving Barracks", as two very indignant
faced formidable looking men in smoky
bear hats moved rapidly in and around
us harshly issuing selected colorful insult
profanities, to confuse and befuddle, issuing
our stunned stupefied group the riot act, at
the very top of their intimidating loud voices,
while ejecting bits of too close up spittle into
the faces of our band of mostly scared kids,
many of whom were no doubt starting to
regret their rash decisions in having joined
up for this. I however was kind of enjoying
the pulse pounding moment in an odd sort
of way.

And so those 90 hectic exhausting days
of boot camp had abruptly commenced.

Some poems never end,
Nor were meant too.
Alliterative phrases, invitations,
Add a verse, a word, even a sound,
An exclamation of delight,
A stanza in its own right.

Unfinished work, forever additive, collaborative.
Modify mine, pass it on,
Free to steal it,
For ownership passes to you,
with your first reading,
And lost when you close it,
Stamp it and release it into the atmosphere.

But some poems do. End.
Unique and distinct,
Pockmarked-faced at birth.
Owned by my initials,
Never to see the shelves of a
Lending Library.

Like this one:

Cannot remember a single day
When suicidal thoughts
Were not heard clearly above the fray
Of jingle-jangled, responsibilities
Demanding my immediate attention.

The end.


NML

leaves loosen from limbs
and the smell of apples sweetens the air

I follow you to the top, to the peak. You  laugh and I know
we are for each other in this life,

despite the weather, the path, the season.

this person, who reads somehow
almost every poem here deposited,
how he does it, a secret, well kept,
but hardly hidden, for he signals
his appreciation in so many ways,
and s p o t l i g h t s those who frequent
contribute, cheerleader and coach
with keen eye and sharpness of brain,
he affectively, affectionately, injects &
infects this little expanse,
this Kingdom of York,
where lovers meet,
speaking in their own
dialect of kindness…

writes himself with a uniqueness,
dare I say in his owned style?
there is never a doubt
who has authored his work,
so many superb scripts,
but his better good works,
present in his presence here,
bringing out the best of the
multiplicities of each of us

but of whom do I speak?

Why,

Carlo C. Gomez

of course!