Poem: Physicist

 

Physicist

 

sixteen,

i solved a puzzle of wonder

which haunted seminars,

 

yes

 

such a seminal burst

of mental bliss,

but the pistons seized,

 

god took my edge,

lack of oil,

froze the cortex,

 

shut me down

into a one-way

disposable sign. 

 

i pointed the way once,

at a crucial juncture,

now half under

 

a stampede

of competing younger feet--

just a laureled fragment,

 

a figment of quark,

a ghost in the aether,

waiting to die.

 

=========================

New Years Eve.  I can't find an urge to celebrate.  The citizens of America have proven themselves as selfish and willfully stupid as those who supported Hitler and Mussolini, leading to World War II.  They have embraced ignorance in the name of the superiority of their nation, their ethnic identity and the superiority of a violent form of machismo over any other gender expression.  Women will suffer.  LGBTQ people will suffer.   People of Color will suffer   And animals and environments will suffer.  And, ultimately we will all suffer, probably from a civ-fatal World War III.  But even if we avoid that armageddon, we will have to live with the choice of Evil; for that is what the US citizen has done, chosen Evil over the path toward a higher ethics technology.  The Evil of the Narcissistic who proclaims himself a god and acts with no morality at all, except might-makes-right, "I will do whatever I want and I will mock the need for me to provide any rational justification."  

Now, with immature psychopathic males in charge of the world, we will not have the maturity to wield the godlike weapons we have:  nuclear weapons, AI, biological and nanotech weapons, and so on.  The future is to be led by "ethical infants" as General Bradley called us, with our fingers on multiple red buttons, any of which can commence general doom.  

Rather than celebrate the 'new year' for one day on a fictional calendar, I wil celebrate every single day, one after the other, immersing in the here and now.  Savor the moment, embrace it, love it.  For it could be gone or slide very far down in an instant.  Savor the beautiful side of the miracle of life, while you can.  That is my wish for you.  For us.  And let us not die petty and bitter.