photo 5-1

“Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.” Pablo Picasso [Picasso statement alleged. Haven’t found the quotation in anything I have, but it’s a good point.]

iPad
iPod
iMac
iPhone
iApple
iStore
iLust
iBuy
iHappy
iBilled
iGroan
iBroke
iPublish
iPoem

© 2011, poem; 2014, photograph, Jamie Dedes, All rights reserved

WEDNESDAY WRITING PROMPT

After the serious prompt last week, I thought I should give everyone a break with a bit of humor spun with truth.  So the prompt this week is about your life with technology: blessing or curse or somewhere between?  Too expensive? Too time-consuming? Wonderfully convenient? Tell us in poem from any perspective.  Have fun!

Share your poem/s on theme or a link to it/them in the comments section below.

All poems on theme will be published next Tuesday. Please do NOT email your poem to me or leave it on Facebook. If you do it’s likely I’ll miss it or not see it in time.

Poems in response to this prompt will be considered for inclusion in the September issue of The BeZine, which is themed social justice.

IF this is your first time joining us for The Poet by Day, Wednesday Writing Prompt, please send a brief bio and photo to me at thepoetbyday@gmail.com in order to introduce yourself to the community … and to me :-).  These will be partnered with your poem/s on first publication.

Deadline:  Monday, July 30 at 8 p.m. Pacific.

Anyone may take part Wednesday Writing Prompt, no matter the status of your career: novice, emerging or pro.  It’s about exercising the poetic muscle, sharing your work, and getting to know other poets who might be new to you. This is a discerning nonjudgemental place to connect.

ABOUT

Poet and writer, I was once columnist and associate editor of a regional employment publication. Currently I run this site, The Poet by Day, an information hub for poets and writers. I am the managing editor of The BeZine published by The Bardo Group Beguines (originally The Bardo Group), a virtual arts collective I founded.  I am a weekly contributor to Beguine Again, a site showcasing spiritual writers.

My work is featured in a variety of publications and on sites, including: Levure littéraure, Ramingo’s Porch, Vita Brevis Literature,Compass Rose, Connotation Press, The Bar None Group, Salamander Cove, Second Light, I Am Not a Silent Poet, Meta / Phor(e) /Play, and California Woman.

24 Comments

  1. Hi Jamie,
    The list of items in your poem reminds me of when ‘m packing for vacation. The first thing I think about is which media item should I take. We have surely become slaves to our tech items. Fun write ..!!!
    YES …. I know it’s too late for me to add my poem/story but I started writing and what I noticed is that I was a lot more frustrated about technology than I thought. I posted it on my blog. I just thought you might find it funny. Between computer issues and my being under-the-weather, I’m late for the party again. LOL Well … I’d prefer to call it fashionably late. have a super week.
    Isadora 😎

    https://insidethemindofisadora.com/2018/08/06/spam-spam-spam-thoughts/

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  3. Thanks Jamie :my response

    #How to confine life ?#

    A frantic search for life ,
    A chase for a rivulet of a thirsty stag .
    Life , a dazzling sunshine ,
    a murmuring stream walking over shingles ,
    How to confine ?
    How to compare
    The screen of my computer in a chamber finite
    And
    The slate of clouds in the sky azure infinite ?
    Comfort , gifts of technology
    Crawls in my brain , body ;
    Atomic war , sucks my blood like a leech .
    Beauty – my earth ,
    My grassy -flowery way ,
    Scent of my motherly air ,
    My hills snowy , my dandelions , birds in my skylight
    Are nothing but passion fruits
    In every nook and corner
    Of my heart and soul ,
    Smearing a cool ointment
    Over my sore throat .

    ©Kakali Das Ghosh

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  4. My first response Jammie :

    #How to confine life ?#

    A frantic search for life ,
    A chase for a rivulet of a thirsty stag .
    Life , a dazzling sunshine ,
    a murmuring stream walking over shingles ,
    How to confine ?
    How to compare
    The screen of a computer in a chamber finite
    And
    The slate of clouds in the sky azure infinite ?
    Comfort , gifts of technology
    Crawls in my brain , body ;
    Atomic war , sucks my blood like a leech .
    Beauty – my earth ,
    My grassy -flowery way ,
    Scent of my motherly air ,
    My hills snowy , my dandelions , birds in my skylight
    Are nothing but passion fruits
    In every nook and corner
    Of my heart and soul ,
    Smearing a cool ointment
    Over my sore throat .

    ©Kakali Das Ghosh

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  5. This is my third response:

    “You Had Me, You

    DON’T OWN
    me.”
    I shout
    at my Mam and Dad.

    “You were all we could afford,
    son. You’re only a teenager.
    We’ve all been there.”

    And I wish I was dead.
    My parents wanted kids
    so they bought my mind
    and body with a Bilder loan,
    (Babies Integral Learning
    and Development Responder).

    Now I’m eighteen and can
    buy stuff myself, my mind

    is full of adverts for upgrades
    I can buy, that Mam and Dad
    used to buy for me.

    For each level of my education
    they were charged
    For advice and for my knowledge
    they were charged
    For my toys food and clothes
    they were charged.
    Now paid in full.

    I get automatic adverts for workskills
    downloaded into my mind,
    for skills I can accept as upload,
    for new bodies I can upload
    my mind into.
    After every thought in my head,
    an advert,
    pay extra for advertless content.

    Now the bank’s Maturity Adviser,
    with my best interests at heart,
    advises The Dark Option,
    Sex, drugs, rocknroll, short life.
    The Light Option, marriage, kids,
    work and pleasant retirement.
    I have to choose a life option,
    or what they call “The Best of Both”

    Mam says ” Get used
    to the adverts in your head.
    We have them too.
    Life is unfair. Live with it.”

    (From “The Spermbot Blues”, OpPress, 2017)

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  6. Here’s my second response:

    My Robot

    skin forgets tha softness.
    At least me snout works,
    I can smell thee cherry lips,
    and strawberry perfume.

    When my old bod got weak
    and fell down more than stood up
    tha had me swap to this robot job.

    with “flexible skin-inspired touch sensors
    as store tactile information,
    like haptic memory”
    or some such, as manual said.

    Store touch sensations
    in my brain, like what
    old one used to.

    Few decades on, this grip
    no longer delicate,
    damages stuff like fruit,

    your skin smells of strawberries.
    I used to be able to
    remember it soft,
    but “softs” only a word,
    with no memory
    of what it meant
    or means.

    My skin stored
    a handshake from a particular person,
    their kiss, their hugs.

    It forgets now.
    Squeezes too hard.
    Hurts thee, and I can
    do nowt about it,
    ‘cept keep away from thee.

    Robot doctor has it my skins pressure-sensitive layer no longer
    detects
    changes in electrical resistance
    when force applied.
    Wants us to spend more cash,
    us can ill afford for the cure.

    Sensors retain information
    for about a week, if that.

    My record of touch,
    wavers.
    It’s touch memory loss.
    I squash a lot of fruit.

    I cannot touch thee.

    Bloody tear ducts work.

    (From “The Spermbot Blues” , OpPress, 2017)

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  7. Hi Jamie,

    My first response:

    Retro Is

    the new Black.

    When I were nobut a bairn
    A fella dahn our street got one.

    He’d traded in his 100 inch
    HDR: HDR10, HDR10+ and HLG
    4 x HDMI with Integrated soundbar

    For an analog black and white valve TV.
    We couldn’t wait to see it.

    Picture had a cool fuzziness.
    He couldn’t have it on long

    as the valves acted like his own heater.
    Godsend in the winter.

    Leaving our boneshakers outside
    we perched on his brown leather sofa

    in our tank tops and shorts agog at the cool
    beeps and scratches and when the screen

    started scrolling when it weren’t meant to
    or fog sidled out its big perforated back

    we laughed like a barrelful of monkeys.
    This were real retro. This were wizard.

    (From an ongoing ekphrastic collaboration with Hiva Moazed, atist for future publication)

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  8. .with regard.

    maybe connections are missed the link dismissed. metaphors faint as my flimsy whispers symbols do you deny me peace? perhaps you utter the words constantly? look closely

    or brush it regularly. talk about birth. stand during the rain fall. regard the chimney. take it off to return it. sometimes we need to commit a while, until we don’t no more

    this is not a word i have used much recently, if i did it will be related to plants i expect. adjective. i may use plush in regard to velvet clothing, cloth, clothed. another adjective

    it could have been simple, days of sewing crosses. red. eight thiry till five. it could have been easy, yet there were issues of the electronic kind meaning wasting time with wires and connections

    she suggested that i write a novel, when i noted that she walked briskly to the post box, dressed suitably. i do not copy plagiarise or write about my friends

    some of us like to be neat in some ways. some of us draw big and messy, and i understand both. we have made marks a long time, since the dawn of. probably

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  9. three-ring circuits

    smartphone is a contra
    diction in terms

    features include spell autoincorrect
    wrong-sign astrology
    minuscule x so if you don’t touch it
    with micrometer precision
    you may be on your way to installing
    the hell app
    also known as the he’ll app

    it is less smart than a dog
    most dogs i should say

    dogs that know how to he’ll

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  10. Such fun, Jamie! Thanks!

    Parting Ways

    I admit I’m a computerholic
    before thirty years ago my life was bucolic
    I could manage my time, the news, my data
    If I misplaced something it didn’t much matta’
    I knew it was here somewhere in the stack
    With a little search I would have it back.

    But that all changed with internet speed
    no more waiting for dial up – a gift indeed
    immediate access to required information
    along with so much from across the nation
    and the world coming in at incredible rate
    who could imagine the future fate.

    What would only take a minute or two
    now requires hours – to read streaming news
    I begin to write and then a new ping
    I have to click – can’t miss a thing
    then I return and autocorrect
    has made the last sentence a total wreck.

    It is a marriage made in hell
    this computer and me – you know too well
    a love/ hate thing – everyday a bout
    I keep coming back – can’t live without
    It knows me best, permanently recorded
    if only I could get it sorted.

    One wrong key I scream out loud
    it’s lost forever in some stupid cloud.
    Which password did I use last
    our good times are going fast.
    I’ve grown too old, I’m getting tired
    More memory for both is surely required

    I’ll close this out, I’m shutting it down
    Cold turkey – there’s no patch that I’ve found
    to make the parting any less hard.
    It’s been a good run, but now I’m charred
    Good bye old comp, it’s been a great fling
    but wait! let me check that very last ping!

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  11. :: crumbs ::

    she orders a sonnet about modern tech

    nology , some recent language urban

    slang. wiki & googling helps while spellcheck

    defeats nistakes . publishing on blurb and

    lulu. gifs no issue. focus on taste.

    .work. memes are impossible to pronounce.

    denounce the pass it forward, copy/ paste.

    why write verse when we can talk or announce

    loudly.. save in my cloud to edit share

    . no rhyme no more. no elizabethan

    manner. we taps it clear. is with difficulty

    keyboards sticky, some have no empathy

    that I prefer old ways. yet computer

    smart create in a more abstract manner

    ©sbm

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  13. Thanks Jamie….first response….

    . fact, fiction, myth .

    it is a fact.

    all is computerised,

    of course these days. yet cold comfort

    counting is the order of a quiet day,

    to correct the till, as, maybe

    we have input wrong. we do

    sometimes you know.

    so we count the stuff, lose our

    minds , hope it all adds up.

    when probably it was right.

    i hope this is alright?

    hello.

    sbm.

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Thank you!