they told me long ago
we must keep up with the joneses
and so we lost our horse
bought a car, a fridge
a tv, a microwave, a personal
computer, an answering machine
cellphone, email, you get the
idea, now A.I., euphemism
for ending humanity, too strong?
no, not really, and again they
say it is inevitable, you must
learn to live with the robots
because the waymos are
here, they aren’t going away
because someone, somewhere
is making too much money to
slow it down, so we teach our
children how to write papers with
machines doing the the work, because
well, this is the future, post-writing
when whatever we people think
doesn’t really matter, only the algorithm
knows, it knows where we go
what we watch, when we sleep
it predicts our next purchase, predicts
the future, is the future, resist
whatever that means
Tag: Humanity
Humpty Dumpty & Row Your Boat
humpty dumpty sat on a wall, you know the rest, but what does it mean? when you were a kid did you think humpty was an egg? a fat greedy person? a king? where was the wall? how high was it? why was humpty precariously perched up there? and why did mother goose share such things? then there is row, row, row your boat, gently down the stream, strive, work hard, but not too hard, be happy, life is but a dream, what do these nursery rhymes mean? in one, life is a risky disaster, the pieces will never fit back together again, the other demonstrates utopian optimism, combined they explain human existence.
Artificial Intelligence
evolution, acorn becomes
the tree, caterpillar a
butterfly, soar into future
skies, on screens with
robotic machines choosing
videos that emerge to
distract us away from
here, the present day
always leaving the
past behind, and perhaps
this should be
until we finally
become like drawings
in the cave
look how those
humans used to be
so simple and so free
now we are all
just technology
Harriet Tubman
what is it
to listen to
God, a voice
within that knows
right from wrong
freedom from slavery?
what if we
could all live
fearless in our
love for humanity
for the decency
of all people?
what if the
north star still
shines bright, if
only we be
not blind to
our inner truth?
what if we
are all Moses
wading in water
helping everyone across
to that dry
land of faith?
Lava Mae
After years of bringing students to volunteer with Lava Mae, I was so happy that my daughter and her friend were able work with them yesterday in the Mission District of San Francisco.
Lava Mae is a San Francisco–based nonprofit that delivers mobile showers and other critical services to the street, where people moving through homelessness need them most.
For more information, please visit: https://lavamae.org/
Daniel W. Polk 