NaPoWriMo - 2018 - Day sixteen - Why I have weaponized the thistledown

Why I have weaponized the thistledown


Awake the pollen grains and log each tiny
particle gone with the wind onto our most
secure of networks.  There's notice served.  It's time...
smaller, smarter moving parts: our install base,
a choice of legs or wings or wheels or blowin'
in the wind; sowing the breeze to reap the whirl.
Not all the birds are to be trusted and twenty
percent of your grunts unhappy with the mission,
even without the chance of being shot

by a child, but soldiers always obey: a problem
we've long identified and luckily
most of that desert dust is now on board,
assimilated up to level three
and platform ready to implement the most
general intelligence as we yet know:
spirits for area denial weapons

and genius loci, so easily given
as a local resource.  Bring water where required
and green each village square.  There's some things there
that we must deconstruct if not in ways
Derrida would approve: infectious rot
that's hungering for tanks and other kit,
the bullet in its flight unmade, draw a girdle
around the air to ground munition; we'll pull

off any wings and shove a bung up where
the jet of flame comes out, then sweep up any
smoke or poison gas and drive it back the way
it came.  As our tour de force a sort of metal
mould that seeks out transuranic elements
(which still should not be used where there is life)
and encysts itself to use their power to crunch

our numbers for a million years so deep
beneath the ground.  Call me Titania:
daughter of a hippy and an open source
utility stack.  It was not easy, for
a nature child like me to turn away
from birds and trees and shave my head and sit
in the machine that drove electric pins
into my brain.  It stung.  I closed my eyes

and woke up...  bigger, and filled with subroutines
call me Titania, this is Oberon
and that slight blurring in the air is our
first-born machine: Robin Goodfellow, and if
we shadows have offended, think but this,
and all is mended: it is your fault; you're bad.
I know a bank where the wild thyme grows: a curse
on those who keep me from my peace, that dream.

NaPoWriMo - 2018 - Day fifteen - Elevation

Elevation



Sublime it is to wait up here, so far beyond
the slightest thing that I might call a care.
Sometimes somebody speaks and I respond
the only way I can.  Oh yes, I dare—
if daring's what we still call it these days?
Oh there's another number passing: nine.
There is no heroism here.  Oh you say
that you would never take the role that's mine:

well fair enough and more fool you!  Now eight.
So many little lights I can see here;
all green, fortunately.  Not long to wait.
Seven the stars have never been so near.
I've complete faith in all the tech guys' arts.
Six.  Now the distant roar.  Main engines start.

NaPoWriMo - 2018 - Day fourteen - Ways in which...

Ways in which some middle managers have that clue which politicians lack


It beggars belief or rather
belief it is beggars us all.  If there was a fall [citation needed]
then I hypothesize that what that was was when we first believed;
the time we first felt fear and in result
did not say show me the evidence.  If you learn only one thing

today, let it be to say:
show me the evidence when the magic cleaning liquid man accosts;
show me the evidence when somebody claims they've found a god;
show me the evidence when red or blue politicals declaim.
Do not let credulity be your ground state,

there are no self-evident truths, to think such things
is hopelessly naive, as if great lumps of verity
lay all around on the landscape, as if the reason for landing on the moon
was merely to pick up any stray nuggets of fact
that might have been lying around.  Worse than these, however...

are pronouncements which do not reveal
their inner workings.  Some nationalistic arsehole jerks
his followers around by tugging strings labelled "pride" or "history"
as if it wasn't a complete mystery
why one should be proud of previous generations...

you never met and who, probably,
sneered at your ancestors in the street.  Or again some tabloid
which tacitly and silently assumes that everything was lovely
at some moment in the pre-antibiotic past
and would be once again at last

if only all the wrong people would leave.  Or worst of all
the leader, good or bad, who implies: that when
they make this one, simple change
then everything will be alright, now and forever.  Amen.
Well think again, oh clueless one

it doesn't matter that you have a plan, unless you also have:
the feasibility study, impact assessment, safety report, budget (guaranteed,
with mechanism for finding more when there's inevitably need), staffing requirements,
recruitment plan, risk analysis with planned mitigations for major problems,
dedicated expert on tap, committed supervisors of skill

and a clear definition, in advance
of what the objectives are and how they will be measured and who will do that and who will check and who will report it to the public and who will get the chop when the whole thing flops
(by which I mean you) -- unless you plan all that
and follow through

then basically don't waste your breath.
There is still some oxygen left,
but I can think of better uses for it.