Month: February 2015

Roboticists Take Note

If Pam the Dog were still alive
Today she would be forty-five.
As it should happen, that’s about
Her “dog years” age when she checked out
In nineteen-double-seven, when
A mongoose — true — attacked her chin
And pierced a vessel deep inside
Her neck. In two short days, she died.
Hawaii’s quarantine was long
And in the end it done her wrong.
Kipling’s Riki-Tiki-Tavi
Notwithstanding, please be savvy
When exterminating snakes:
Control your tools, for all our sakes.

(Few / Many) – 1 < 0

The Needs of Few divided by
The Needs of Many yields what I
Suppose is called a proper fraction,
From which One’s a gross subtraction.

Prosperous, he did live long
Enough to write the Bilbo song,
So logic dictates that he’d had
His way with life. And yet, I’m sad.

The Undiscovered Country must
Have dropped its prefix now, I trust;
The search, for Spock, today is done.
We Many left will miss the One.

Geometric Progression

There comes a point at which one’s youth
Might be considered to have passed.
This may not correspond, in truth,
To Total Years on Earth Amassed.
A case in point: I’m fifty years
Behind my Grandmama in age
But still I’m two days in arrears
Of marking that upon this page.
She’s now twelve-hundred twenty-four
Months old, so, mathematically,
Two days’ delay produced a more
Exciting number string for me:
12 / 24 / 48*
(*That’s hours.) Cool, right? Just a touch?
I hope you didn’t mind the wait,
Grandmama. Love you very much!

Infinicky

I remember Morris. He
Was finicky on our TV
When I was little. He survives
In memory because 9Lives
(The only brand he deigned to eat)
Retrieved him from a shelter. Sweet.
I think of Morris now and then
And most particularly when
My own cat claims I’m starving her
And shows me where her dinners* were
Just minutes prior. *Yes, that’s right,
That’s dinners, plural, every night.
So far from finicky is she
I sometimes turn in time to see
Her noshing nachos from my dish,
Or rice, or bits of breaded fish.
I could go on, but that meow
Means someone’s running short of chow.
“I’m coming, mistress!” I’d refuse,
But what if, next, it’s me she chews?
I’d best not take the chance, in case
I sleep, then wake without a face.
I love my cat, and she loves me
(Perhaps with sausages and tea).

Judgement Day

The ballots have been tallied
And the envelopes are sealed
The paragraphs prepared for when
The winners are revealed

It’s lots of fun but when we’re done
That aftertaste’s because
We care way more for this than for
The folks who write our laws