Daubs Deployed

Whispers echo still, enlighten’d darkness,

Linger, longing, found in cyberspace,

Heard beyond all planetary, winsome,

I hear them then I picture words and face.

Whispers rise up, somehow are converted,

Awesomely configured, rendered, changed,

I can’t conceive of how a brain invented

Ways to alter speech, so rearranged.

I guess it started with some daubs on cave walls,

Grunts to graphics, pics for history,

Some cuneiform and hieroglyphs translating

Thoughts to page awaiting you and me,

Some ink pens then, calligraphy, that beauty,

Painstaking effort, patient and adorned,

Greek, Semitic, Arabic and Chinese

Marks upon some parchment to inform.

I’m thinking then of smoke and drums and phone calls

And telegraphs that sped the process on,

Who knew that one day someone could encrypt so

And fire words to ether coded, formed.

Thinking typewriters, TV and now Skyping,

Measures that foreclose the distance, space,

So techy I can barely understand it

But glad still that the progress had its place.

I’m putting down my pen now, words on paper,

Typing from the symbols, thoughts to all,

Sending code still daubed, deployed as little pictures,

Some abstracted, etched forever on my cavern’s wall.

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Babies, Bath Water And Wheels

One of those days where laughs have been absent,

Well, not absent, but definitely too few,

Too many reasons for not seeing the funny,

Like a failure to perceive different views.

Listening to others, all serious with cause

For things that, frankly, are lame,

Waffling on about nothings of note

With nary a pause in each frame.

Watching enactments of things seen before,

Discussed and never quite sorted,

Ideas never birthed, though pregnant with points,

Incited then swiftly aborted.

Boring, ’tis true, not the kids, not all,

But the professionals when gathered as one

At meetings of yore, the same as before,

All talk and nothing is done.

Not a laugh to be had though god knows I giggled,

Mostly just under my breath,

Demented I was and tired of each cause

But mainly just bored to death.

It’s the plague of the system that seeks to improve,

Hashes, rehashes, all logged,

Eyes glazing over, not mine, I’m too nosey,

Mental notes to be blogged.

Young woman beside me has kids on her mind,

Baby tended at home by a carer,

Well looked after, no doubts whatsoever

But I know her mind’s really there.

Not present, another, he’s gone with the wind,

Slouching deeper, bent double, spaced out,

Bored and disinterested by monotoned leader,

I know him well enough to not doubt

That thoughts on his mind revolve round his football

And he runs, so he’s thinking of that,

Or his wife and his kids, how he’ll moan when he’s home,

I don’t blame him, though he acts like a brat.

One says her piece and I stifle a yawn,

Can’t help it, it’s been a long day,

We’re all just tired, in need of a rest

So I suggest we’ve said all we can say.

And lo and behold the leader agrees!

She’s fed up too with the nonsense,

It’s good to know that it’s not just the minions

Who recognise some common sense.

Another will follow as they always do,

Another and then just one more,

And then once again to tick all the boxes,

They’ve made teaching a helluva chore.

It’s rife, so it seems, that all that we do,

In jobs, professions, careers

Requires so much talking, so much distilled shit

Till it’s streaming and pouring from ears.

I have to confess I do say my piece

Though usually it’s not well-received

When I remind all gathered that nothing much changes

Gasps! I’m not being believed.

Once in a while would be fine for a purpose

If action and sense would prevail,

But, not holding my breath till retirement comes,

Been there, seen that, done it and hail –

It circles around – like proverbially wheel,

Though no one admits that’s the case

Unless you’re a bit older with a trap you can’t shut

And enjoy the looks on their face

At heresy spouted, remembrances past

And how this is just as I find

Reinventing the wheel but not nearly as well,

Babies and baths come to mind.

Now, my poem’s as long as the meeting we had,

And there’s nothing visual for you

To redeem all the talk, to survey and to think,

So you’re dismissed ‘cos that’s what I do. 🙂