The dog plays football every day
with me, along the passageway.
We pass the ball from dog to man
and then from man to dog again.
I’m bored as hell. It pleases him
for dogs are slow and somewhat dim.
Dog
The man plays football every day
with me, along the passageway.
He tries so hard, it’s rather sweet
for one who’s blessed with two left feet.
It keeps him happy; I don’t mind.
I’ve grown quite fond of human kind.
Man and Dog
We both hate football.
How much happier we would be
watching cricket on tv.
A Dutch company recently created a new painting by Rembrandt. The fact that he has been dead for hundreds of years was not a problem. They scanned his paintings ,selecting details from each picture they looked at. The final database was huge. Then they created a multi layered picture that had depth and texture as well as light and shade – and it looks faultless- you can see the video here:
I was fascinated by the whole process. This man never lived….but he looks real, alive. Is this a work of art ? Or a workout for Big Data ? This is the poem which came out of it all.
The Next Rembrandt
A tradesman shopkeeper perhaps,
stylish in his Sunday best –
the ruff starched crisp and white,
A countenance so every-day,
so commonplace, and yet a palimpsest
of all the people he has ever been
from boy to man.
Truth lies in that face.
He is a phantasm, a chimaera,
a million data points distilled,
a clever magic trick.
Or maybe there’s a ghost in the machine,
a bug which emulates the human soul,
An Instant Message flashed up on the screen,
A spark of hope which makes the broken whole.
1.
Isac ! Your lunch is ready.
Stop moping in that orchard !
Go and wash your hands !
Unheard unseen
the apple falls.
2.
It’s a message, Will,
from the Queen.
She likes the play
but could you make Hamlet
a bit more cheerful……
and alive at the end..
3.
I shall call her Luisa.
If it had been a boy, my husband
would have called him Adolf.
4.
Honey, I got to stay late at the Oval Office tonight –
can’t make the theatre.
Okay Abe
Plump as plums, clustered among leaves,
they hang in a green shade.
Pick one. Peel back the husk and find
a shell there, pocked and wrinkled
like some distant world.
You’ll need a knife. Just press
your blade against the lateral line
then prise the halves apart
and there, in a nutshell
is a brain.
Packed tight into an inch wide skull
two waxy hemispheres
each ridged and swollen
into lobes and clefts
and each the image of the other.
Remove the nut and place it on your tongue.
Crisp at first bite, then soft.
It tastes of sap,
and garnered sunlight
and green thoughts.
The Top Banana 