Poetry

I published a poem in a college literary magazine, offending my wife. I think she believed I found fault with her freckles. The poem wasn't meant to be hurtful. I was just trying to be witty.

The Freckle

A marvelous thing, the freckle.
So much more than just a spot.
A brownish, roundish fleck, a speck,
Inglorious it's not.

It serves a noble purpose,
Whether found on back or face,
Adorning what might otherwise
Be just an empty space.

An attempt at a more serious poem was this one about man's relationship to computers, although it is a bit dated and corny now, thirty years after I wrote it. I always had a love/hate relationship with the computer. I was an operator and programmer of large mainframe systems in my youth. This was written many years before the first PC appeared, when a single computer system could fill an entire room with dozens of equipment cabinets and components . I penned this poem late one lonely night while operating a large business computer system in a deserted corporate data center.

The Computer

I stand and watch the blinking lights
As I have done so many nights.
Alone with dread I've stood this ground
And watched it work without a sound.

There before me, silently
Directing mankind's destiny
Stands the creature so adored,
A man-made cybernetic Lord.

With fading hope for many years
I've stared in awe, as one who peers
Through quiet pew rows at the cross
And felt the sorrow of man's loss.

How could we, through our own neglect,
Ignore the gift of intellect
And choose to live in subject rule
Beneath an automated ghoul?

Oh, God, if only men could see
These things that now seem clear to me
They'd kill the evil beast today
And turn to follow in Your way.

I fear that time may never come
And man will finally succumb.
The only remnant of his might,
A cold and lifeless blinking light.

In our present age I no longer fear that man might fall under the control of some all-powerful monolithic computer system. It is more likely that we will choose to sit contentedly at the keyboards of our PCs, having traded our televisions for an even more satisfying device, one with even greater potential for intellectual and emotional addiction.

Whoa! I'd better lighten up.