Parasite Man on Mother Earth

 We are naturally quick to deal with parasites be they lethal or not; we don't like them. Our own parasitic nature seems to bother us less though the list of our damage-making is horrendous. This list confirms us as a deadly parasite

Parasite Man on Mother Earth

secreting toxins,

poisoning the water,

depleting the oxygen,

destroying the lungs,

blocking the veins,

contaminating the blood,

raising the temperature,

removing nutrients,

desiccating the skin,

disrupting biorhythms,

inflicting wounds,

impeding defence systems.

AI: Have your poems critiqued in seconds?

OpenAI released ChatGPT in Nov 2022; it is  a jaw-dropping language tool that really will make a colossal differance, particularly in the educational field but also for all those wanting to produce written pieces, be they essays, articles, reports, emails, etc. It has already attracted huge attention worldwide and has educationalists wondering how the technology will impact the future teaching of languages; indeed, some are wondering if they themselves have a future.

I asked the 'chatbot' if it would comment on a poem; it replied "Of course!" It would do its best to provide me with its thoughts and comments. I gave it the poem in the previous post and instantly, line by line, my reply began to emerge:

"This is a haiku, a traditional form of Japanese poetry that consists of three lines with a 5-7-5 syllable pattern. The poem evokes a sense of transience and impermanence, as the field that was blanketed with snow yesterday is now a blank page to be drawn on.

The use of the word "yesterday" in the first line immediately creates a temporal contrast with the present moment, suggesting the fleeting nature of time. The second line, "blank under snow today," paints a stark picture of the field's transformation, while the final line, "A page to draw on," presents the reader with the opportunity to interpret the blankness in a creative way.

Overall, this haiku is a simple yet effective meditation on the transitory nature of life and the creative potential of emptiness. It encourages the reader to embrace change and find beauty in the fleeting moments of existence."

To say I was impressed is a major understatement; I asked it to do the same with the post before that aggain. Here's its reply:

"This is a lovely poem with vivid imagery that paints a picture of the vibrant ecosystem of a forest. The contrast between the activity at the surface and the more hidden life beneath the trees is particularly striking, as is the use of sensory details throughout.

The first stanza creates a sense of mystery and depth, as the fish dart through the shadows and the afternoons take on a languorous quality. The second stanza introduces an unexpected element with the choirs of earthworms, and the idea of them singing "long-forgotten sea shanties" is a delightful play on words that brings a sense of whimsy to the poem.

The final stanza is particularly effective, with its description of the movement on the surface of the forest. The use of alliteration ("stippled and dancing") and onomatopoeia ("jingling") adds a musical quality to the poem, reinforcing the idea of the forest as a lively and dynamic place.

Overall, this poem is a beautiful meditation on the wonders of nature, reminding us of the rich and varied life that exists all around us, even in the quietest and most hidden corners of the world."

I am, of course, going to have to work to prevent myself running all my poems by it; in fact, maybe I should ask it for its views on that. In the meantime, you should try it, or better still wait for the coming version that is reported to be a hundred times stronger!

It could be that writing workshops are about to saunter off down memory lane following in the footsteps of their typewriting parents!

 

A field yesterday,

blank under snow today.

A page to draw on.

Impression

 

In the depths of trees,

beyond the reach of the sun,

fish are darting through the torpor

of beer-brown afternoons.

Below, in the leaf-litter,

choirs of earthworms

with yawning-wide mouths

sing long-forgotten sea shanties.

An hour turns

like iron-rimmed oaken barrel.

But on the surface all is movement:

stippled and dancing;

juggling the sun;

jingling the passing days away.

Present Day Slavery: Forced Labour

My bones a hoist,

I carry stones;

harness over my skull,

legs levers

flexing extending

all day everyday

fourteen hours in each,

rungs up rungs down,

daylight into darkness

into daylight darkness.

They’ve made ladders

of our bones

who never carried stones;

always climbing

rungs up rungs up

all day everyday

stepping off our skulls

into daylight daylight 

always daylight

always.

Perhaps as many as 50 million people living in slavery of this and many other kinds today, Feb 6th 2023. There is a TED talk which  I recommend though it is not an easy 20 mins: https://www.ted.com/talks/lisa_kristine_photos_that_bear_witness_to_modern_slavery

Away

 

I’m in bed, hearing

my parents’ footsteps on the landing.

then in my room.

They have not come to tuck me in

but, together, pass through the wall

and out into the night.

I cry, go to the window;

a full-moon night

but they are nowhere;

not in the sky

nor in the garden below;

they are gone.

The moon and night,

fields and hedges all have life;

my parents have gone to them.

It is inexplicable,

but so is the room and so is sadness;

and what is the child?

Years later, trying to hear

the sound of those footsteps again;

a different room in a different place;

the tune they made refuses to form;

easier to look out the window,

travel after them into their infinity.

Days

 

Days are the harvest of time. Each a segment

of film-strip lit with its own light and,

for all the weight that fills them,

 thyey are delicate as the dandelion seeds that stream in

their billions through a bright summer’s afternoon.

Turn your palms down; look at the parchment

on the backs of your hands; a certificate of life.

You carry it; it stays with you, ends with you;

a reason to celebrate, for today all our days are this one day;

it is an exhilaration to be.

The Hands That

 

In death it’s often the hands

cranked square immobile

hold the eye;

held solid

that dead soul.

Ah, the hands that could

catch love

now stoney

The Photograph

 

My father in a beam of sunlight from the kitchen window,

the rest of the room a dim background; hands extended,

bending down to his granddaughter, minute particles of dust

glistening around them.

Vermeer-like: an intimate moment made still and lasting in

a slant of light, a gentleness isolated from the moving world;

a glimpse to slow the pulse, stop at the pool of a mind,

contemplate the heart.

Starry Night

 

The intricate weave

of their rhythms

glint and ripple

glitter and flow

sometimes loud

sometimes low

I sit through the early hours

listening

to the stars’ music

across the carnival of the sky

those haphazard harmonies

making an ear of the eye

Cigar Smoke

 

Outside, in dim night light, smoking a Christmas cigar,

looking along the front wall, the angle it makes with the eaves,

the dark triangle at the top of the down pipe;

exhaling a plume of smoke, watching it diffuse beneath

that geometry, the smell of Christmases long gone.

Faces, faint holograms now, waft on that tobacco thermal.

Viewing them coolly in the dank air, those that carried me to now;

life a succession of relations with others,

the rise and fall of characters through my own story,

lights that shone, dazzling or dim, and lights that went out.

They smile, talk and laugh, settle cups on saucers, swish whiskey

round crystal glasses, roll cigars along lips before lighting.

I watch them: acts and scenes on stages that are gone, my boarded up theatres;

watch them,  essential links, coffin-bearers

and stubbing out the butt of my cigar, return to the lights in the house.

A Transparent Eyeball

 

“I become a transparent eyeball; I am nothing; I see all; the currents of the Universal Being circulate through me; I am part of God.” 

                                                                                                                                                              Emerson Ralph Waldo Emerson

Reclaiming

the occurrence of all things

in myself;

as close to God,

unfettered

as the free circulation of air;

being

as the sensations of all living

pass through me.

Man in Man

 

Inside himself,

that’s the silence.

He lived

away from us,

from our view;

a complete union

of person and soul;

an isolation

we observed

even in his company.

We thought him incomplete

in our ignorance.

The Christmas I share with Paddy Kavanagh

When in ‘A Christmas Childhood’, Patrick Kavanagh writes,

“Cassiopeia was over

Cassidy’s hanging hill,

I looked and three whin bushes rode across
The horizon — the Three Wise Kings.”

I know exactly what he saw, me too one very clear crisp Christmas night, they were making their way in bright moonlight up the hill towards Scardaun not far from Roscommon town. I was astonished, they were so clearly outlined against the sky. God knows, they were a long way off course; with that sense of direction I'd recommend giving up following stars.

It was not hard for a child brought up on miracle-laden gospel stories, fairy stories, ghost stories, Celtic legends and Aesop’s fables to see three kings on the slope of a hill. With a lively imagination, a child might turn from the ghostly shadows in the corners of his bedroom to the distant horizon outside his window and know, categorically, that there are no borders; not between Heaven and Earth nor Ard Mhaca and Tombstone.

Sure, I watched for travelling stars at Christmas, and, come Good Friday, I expected the Heaven’s floor to be ripped open and God’s fury to be visited on the town in an horrific display of lightning bolts at exactly three o’ clock in the afternoon. Easter Sunday, I expected to see the beams of light radiate from between the clouds, the glory of God the Father extending out over the land.

In my childhood, the year was measured out in religious festivals, all of which had direct bearings on our lives. An apparition seemed to me to be a very likely event given the fact that our family said the rosary each night, and I was considered a shoe-in for the priesthood. I was petrified at the notion of God or Our Lady arriving into my bedroom full of flash and bang, and calculated at a very young age that my best chance of avoiding such an appalling possibility was to ditch the whole religion thing completely.

But the beauty of Kavanagh’s poem! He reminds us that the child of those days and that upbringing expected and saw the signs of Heaven in the world around him:

“The light between the ricks of hay and straw

Was a hole in Heaven's gable”.

His retelling of a Christmas morning in which his father’s music sailed over the fields to the Lennons and Callans, clear as water, and further, way, way, away, to the universe where the stars themselves were dancing to his tune. How he hurried into his trousers to be out into that Christmas morning, into a world made magnificent with the

“winking glitter of a frosty dawn”.

How wonderful it is to have memories from home so magical; how pure that dream flowing down the years of growing. And when those years finally turned over, and the boy was a man, how could he leave Monaghan behind him; wasn’t there a perfection to the old life? Wasn’t the spirit of the child as pure and brilliant as that Christmas morning?

And how could I leave Roscommon behind, and the magnificence of those same pristine, frosty mornings still sparkling in my head. Those were the mornings that filled you with such unexpected happiness that you broke into a run, the only way to disperse the energy that was surging up inside you.

And then Christmas; no question as to the magic. If it was a sun-bright frosty morning, Heaven was already smiling. And as to the wonders of the day, of course, Santa could fit down a chimney; anyone who can circumnavigate the world in a sleigh pulled by a team reindeers can fit down a chimney. At about noon the smell of Uncle Brendan’s cigar kicked off the festivities, there was a jug of orange squash in the middle of the dinner table and the lights on the tree were the stars taken down from the sky.

Sure enough Adulthood and geography make Christmas something else; life changes everything. What was magical is rationalized and the excitements of childhood find some other vent. But the well of childhood continues to pour out its Christmas gifts; the memories that colour my mind make the day special despite those distances. I rise a little later, and there’s not quite the rush to get down to the sitting room, but the day blooms into happiness, and there’s that same celebration of being alive.

Portrait

 

this way,

flesh pouring;

mouth agape,

teeth watching

there, there,

tumbling dice,

eyes unhitched,

plunging down

faster,

concaved cheeks

coil inward

to the perfect ohhhh