© 7 June 2012, Thom the World Poet, © 9 June 2012, the Griot Poet (response)
I have a friend who is paid by IBM
Just to sit around and solve conundrums
He is a poet-as several other IBM ex-poets
Whose lateral emotional bases allowed flexibility?
Yet whose individuality clashed with corporate groupthink
(You cannot make soup out of ice cream-
Ideas often threaten power structures focused upon control)
Investment post September 11 is in military, police, surveillance mega-industry
All of which constitute inertial economic drags upon productive creative processes
As schools now focus more on learning to the test
Movies and music become retro /recycled clichés eating off past visions
Toffler was right/De Bono was right-to sell thought processing to Corporations
Every cliché is true. Dick Tracy wristwatches exist/as do jetpacks
They have yet to be commercially marketed. Space travel exists (privatized)
Patents for new inventions compound Jetsons/2001/Star Trek previews of the possible
Venture capital supported enterprises seek solutions/even when most investment is military
Eccentric individualism has been replaced by robotic anime-
Programmed drones kill civilians with no responsibility
Technology has no morality. Science is value free.
Economics only one factor when it comes to innovative technology
What philosophy Armageddon? Sarin, anthrax attacks? Deliberate assassinations…
STUXNET cyber-warfare, universal surveillance, secrecy and censorship-
All limit both individual freedom and initiative. New ideas required
But first we need to replace those robots and drones
With poets, artists, philosophers-free thinkers all!
*****
We forget the lesson of "Ender's Game,"
As Mazer Rackham, of bugger-kill fame
And the faux military-industrial-complex declares fair game
A sentient race we make "other" with epithet
No science used to program
- A Google translator
- Or Star Trek "universal communicator"
To see what a hive-complex species thinks,
To know how an entire entity of beings
Lived in harmony,
Before Ender advertently: made them extinct!
Seeking only to live
Beyond its planetary borders
We were attacked in the story: what for?
Because: "they hated our freedoms"?
Orson Scott Card does not explore
The myriad possible reasons Earth was assaulted
In his treatise...as a species, we’ve got a history of pissing people off!
OBL of 9/11 fame made it quite plain: it was for the children
WE bombed in Iraq between false wars
And his twisted devotion
To eye-for-eye killings of more innocents
as if that would implore
Blood to flow that had once been poured,
Sinews and skin to assemble
Upon dry bones
"La vengeance se mange tres-bien froide,"
Or,
"Revenge is very good eaten cold," (Novel: Matilde, 1841)
As I compose verse to the coming sun,
I bear witness:
IT [revenge] makes a poor spark,
Or kick start
To a resurrection!
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