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Have you ever been wrong?
I was wrong.
Ugly, smugly wrong.
Psephologically wrong.
Hit the iceberg,
smoking’s good for you,
the treaty of Versailles,
left on red,
Copernicus, Aristotle, Custer,
wrong.
I’m not claiming an excuse,
wrong.
It wasn’t you,
it was me,
wrong.
Just fricking
kiss a frog
wrong.
Wrong all along,
wrong about the world,
reevaluate me wrong,
wrong, wrong, wrong.
I can admit I was wrong.
Can you forgive me,
can I forgive me,
wrong
.
.
Songs for this:
Waters of March by John Roseboro & Mei Semones
Stabilise by Nilüfer Yanya
BLT Merriam Webster word of the day challenge 11/05/24
Psephology = the scientific study of elections.
As the autumn leaves whirl around
I sit quietly listening to the sound
And look outside, struck by what I've found
The beauty that surrounds

Now fall is not my favorite time of year
Christmas is, and for good cheer
I get to spoil my kids, and my dear
And love abounds

I love my husband and he loves me
There's no arguing, we live happily
I'm awestruck everyday by what I feel and see
Like his queen, I was crowned

So as I'm faced with autumn, and the cold
I'll surround myself with love and beauty untold
I have my love and he has me to hold
As the leaves fall all around
For my love
The coldest night air
Seems no different than the
Space around the stars.
The mercury is dropping faster then we expected. It’s not quite polar vortex weather yet but the dry air and static warns of its approach.
this accidental status, we are all very busy
to be on the lookout for, the odds are not
terrible compared to the lottery, a modest
1 in 300 million, but it’s an easy buy and bust, just a two dollar bill, two lousy singles,
for a legal purchased fantasy that’s
cheaper than a cup of coffee

but finding love is miserable murderous
murmuring mess, can be very expensive, and
exhausting too, physically and mentally,you’re swimming in shallow waters tween razor rocky coral, begging for a slice of your double sized portion of anguish

And yet,
can’t be that hard,
it is a mega billion busyness,
with no cure or satisfactory vaccine,
and the randomness can drive you
mad, make panting to-pack it in,
until your spidey sensnses tingling,
a ketchup and bitter herbs mixture,
and you’re sweating, and it’s 100% anticipation of the well known (!)
unknown risks, this easy
walkway~path in the woods,
leads you on, with marvelous views,
even babbling brooks, till you find
you’ve climbed halfway way up a mountain and to make it to the top,
it’s a rocky boulder strewn,
ankle and heart twisting road that
takes you to the grandest place and plan

oh but, boy,
where the view of the worldscape is only
fantastico, but the only way back down involves throwing yourself into a
quarry pit, full of dangerous chemicals,
that burn scars into your inside parts, invisible wounds so untreatedbly unspeakably bad and incurable
again and again,

and you say stupid things like
I can’t help myself,
what’s a matter daddy,
just want some sugar in my bowl,
and when your neck gets broke,
and it’ll take incredible processing
to just get you to walk again,
and yet
the single
odiferous scent, that amuse bouche on
your lips, and you’ll do it all again for
once monte carlo throw of the dice,
because the odds ain’t that bad,
everbody lives somebody
and given the billions of opportunities walking in just this planet,
even one in a million sounds
pretty good,
even,


very…fair
rain drops fall upon her head
try push her to the ground
but she stands tall against it all
and strength and love are found

the torment and the cold
of the never ending drops
feed her very core with life
and eventually it stops

the hardships that we face
are not always as we see
sometimes they just happen
to be exactly what we need

the petals soaking wet
stem dripping down with tears
but still the flower stood
in lieu of all her fears

then the sun came out
as the rain began to cease
and her purpose came to light
and she enjoyed a life of peace
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?
Prepared as a discussion paper for a ****** Old boys reunion destined for the seaside town of Rye, Victoria, Australia in November of this year.
Rush around in circles like a headless chicken running
Diminishing to spirals in a blue encircled churn
Giddying to balance in unsteady equilibrium,
Whilst canting to the left on a gyroscopic turn.

Vaulting to the heavens in gymnastical maneuvering,
Launching into ether in fanatical escape,
****** features grimacing through muscular contortion
With abdominal contractions in a pantomime of ****.

Yowling to the darkness in a feline form of vocalness
Hissing through the teeth in a serpentine display,
Bellowing the bellicose of bovine innuendo
And bleeding feet in gumboots on a ****** raining day.

Rush around in circles like a headless chicken running
With ****** features grimaced on a ****** raining day,
Yowling to the darkness with abdominal contraction
In a bovine innuendo of a serpentine display.

Bellowing the bellicose of bleeding feet in gumboots,
Vaulting to the heavens in fanatical escape,
Giddying to spirals in contracting equilibrium
Just a ****** innuendo of a gyroscopic shake.


Marshalg
Victoria Park Tunnel
On a ****** raining day.
7 August 2010
A Blast from the Past
Obviously suffering from something gastric....or perhaps I'd just been into the scotch whisky??
Anyway... Lotsa fun!
M.
(a poem in Senryus)

Let’s rerun the play,
take up strings, so the puppets
can start fresh their dance.

Summon the old ghosts—
Shakespeare’s doomed heroes
—pronounce them reborn.

Recall the actors,
lead horses from their pastures,
raise the curtains.

Pay Shylock his pound
of flesh, give Richard his horse,
let Viola love anew.

Old, ever-hallowed
villainy, once banished,
has taken new stage.

Human suffering,
live—don’t fret, you won’t miss it
—it’ll come to you.
.
.
Songs for this:
Kool Thing by Sonic Youth
End of the innocence by Don Henley
The Perfect Idiot by Fievel Is Glauque
Merriam Webster word of the day challenge:
Hallowed = something or someone, highly respected and revered.

Shylock was 'the Merchant of Venice', driven to revenge by prejudice and discrimination, 'King Richard III', (also the plays name) trapped after the Battle of Bosworth Field, cried "My kingdom for a horse," before being slain, and in "Twelfth Night", Viola loved Duke Orsino, but things got 'complicated.'
Oh, how you really want to sit in your village yard,
where you can smell the scent of walnut leaves,
in a wooden chair.
Without a word,
in the contemplation of silence,
as the last autumn sun warms your body.
amor tardius occidit
We should have
been so much
more.
Now we're just a torn
page
in a finished book.
The memories are
fading,
but the pain still lingers.
I still smell you on
my fingers.
I still taste you on
my tongue.
Love kills slowly;
a backward glance from
an invisible god.
I'm a bird that sings,
but cannot fly.
I'm the ticking of a
clock.
A rocking chair.

tick

tock...
Here is a link to my you tube channel where I read my poetry.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XN9CrqlcvIY
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