Zippered Demise Awaiting
by Odin odin@aflx.com — Read all 3,869 poems by Odin odin@aflx.com
After reading a review of “The Hemlock Cup,” a biography of Socrates, questions of the AI future make for interesting “what ifs,” especially in light of the 2017 "reading" statistics:
1/3 of high school graduates never read another book for the rest of their lives.
42 percent of college graduates never read another book after college.
80 percent of U.S. families did not buy or read a book last year.
(Source: Jenkins Group) (NY public library underground levels - Image by Holdengraber)
Wednesday, January 10, 2018
Zippered Demise Awaiting
In the not too distant future…
Witness wanders as wounded Conscience,
standing aloof under street lamps,
beside neon ripple,
beneath skyscraper mortality,
weeps.
Before it…
Lining New York's Public Library sidewalk,
zippered black bags confine
printed and bound survival like frozen ice,
broken by storm and quake.
Spines and pages enmeshed,
history upon stacked history,
knowledge once free to just be,
now as rubble held tight
awaiting caravan by air-glide dumpsters.
Conscience moves up the marbled steps,
like visitors first finding the pyramids of civilization,
visiting manifest of Time in perpetuity,
civilization's 42nd and 5th corner stone.
This edifice to Man's advancement,
children's exposure to what has been,
adult's learning of what might be,
now destined as cavernous shock and awe of another kind.
Conscience moves through pillared entrance--
Listening--
Seeing--
Pained ether roils within
vacuous marbled bastions,
mourning’s loss conceded,
synaptic sorrow weeping,
now but diminutive ghosts of Sanskrit,
hieroglyph and Roman text.
Turning back to the streets
as air-ride's floating destiny arrives,
robotically lifting bags on air-belts,
last gasps of learned breath
moves from hard cover to soft,
acquiescing beneath suffocating blackness.
Tail gates close.
Conscience solemnly asks
what gain comes of fear-entrenched ignorance?
Where be the glory of blind-progress's spoils?
Why indulge the salute to what might be momentary gain
while Time's honored wisdom is made to succumb?
Conscience contemplates what happened?
Why such a fear?
Why such a gamble?
Into the night silent air-ride vehicles travel,
arriving at launch pads to infinity
where bodies of millennia knowledge
await becoming the ion-propelled barges of space-fill.
As launches continue,
questions dwindle,
resistance wanes,
mind matters less.
Conscience ceases.
Fear remains.
Are we facing a cognitive tree of terminal outcomes,
where because some branches are short we falter,
while far too much intelligence succumbs to drought-stunted shrubs?
Like the blind trying to catch fireflies,
are we inching toward a “knowledge” helplessness?
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Love ya!
Jane
I've known some who read voraciously; which in and of itself is good. But strangely, when you asked certain of them to reflect a little about what they'd absorbed from the book, they had very little to say; almost as if they hadn't read it at all. That always puzzled me. Honestly, reading without reflecting is like eating without digesting. I suppose though that some books are to be tasted, some swallowed, and then there are those meant to be chewed and digested. This write elicited thought, Odin; a kind of lament I related to. "knowledge helplessness"? Perhaps. Mark Twain said: "The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who can't read." How true that is. Thanks for sharing. All the best... rlc