A smattering of poems

Ode to the Wheel

Few, crowded hands, sparse, though one

Though they are doomed, they have begun

To carve out of stone, to weave out of reeds

A simple machine, at a countable speed


Slow, like molasses, the start is the worst

The hands now press on, becoming the first

The wheel, it is heavy, the few stagger on

Though they couldn't conceive of what was beyond


Slow, ever faster, loss to a snail's pace

So how then does this machine win every race

How will it turn through the sleet and the fire?

How will it keep on and never get tired?


Hands start to fall, the first die young

Young hands placed anew, increasing the sum

They need never push the wheel from a stop

The wheel has momentum, gained from the hands dropped


So one becomes some, and some garner quick

Some hands start to ponder alternative tricks

One gets the Wheel next to a wandering brook

So the Wheel takes less hands than the Wheel had just took


But, then, Eureka! An idea is found

And so the wheel turns and the grains are then ground

Which then feeds the more hands, which push it some more

Through the plagues and the deaths and the famines and wars


And yes there are conquests and villages burning

But nevertheless the Wheel keeps on turning

Its mass too immense, it cannot stop now

The Wheel transports tools and new knowledge and cows


The hands, will they stop? Their mission complete?

Surely by now, they're made obsolete?

But with metals and foods and large rubber bands

The Wheel seems to cultivate much stronger hands


The Wheel defies all, the Wheel is divine

The saviour to death, it's curing the blind

The weak die not young, splendors seek them out

The Wheel keeps on spinning its wonders about


No hand now could stop it, a beautiful thing

The beauty unbound in a sphere or a ring

Though that ring has been carved, what was the deal?

Carved out of carvings carved out by the Wheel


The Wheel keeps on spinning, the hands, they push on

The Wheel aids in theatres and novels and songs

The Wheel never stops, never slows or plateaus

It accelerates by hand, just as ages ago


So when the mountain stands before you

Or when the sea seems vast and blue

Know the Wheel turns all the faster

To make a molehill of disaster

Two Body Problem

The Three body problem will make one's mind unsound

So I'd much rather think of a noun and a noun

To see how eyes wrap 'round their friends and their peers

To watch fuzzy memories fuzzily appear

To see folks stand closely, apparently fond

And watch to see sparks of invisible bonds

Gone with the glass and in with the flesh

Icky and smelly and imperfect, yes,

Though I hope I'm lucky, I hope that I'm able

To join imperfections sat down at a table

I'll say nothing much, or nothing of note

And they will agree, as if I had spoke

Yes, that is where the name is devised

As this second person's where problems arise

You'll see it in others, quite plain with your eyes

But how can you see your invisible ties?

They say that you'll know it, though that is a miss

If we'd been aware, we shan't reminisce

And so if I were given just one little wish

I'd wish that I'd know it before it is missed

Zombies on the Moon

Swimming the seas of the dark, calm stone

Is a downtrodden astronaut who hasn't atoned

For some sin, some disgrace, some flaw or a fault

So now they tread slowly in the tranquil basalt


Helmet burst open, suit caked and dusted

With a pale toxic ground, so their lungs are all busted

So as the Moon dies before its next, new exchange

That star sailor tumbles along the vast range


Dance to the seas of your own counterpart

As both you and your tenant will slowly depart

Frozen and vacuumed, a serenely stilled face

Looks over the craters next to the past base


Bask in the shimmer, you great nauta mortis

Swim the warm waters of mare frigoris

And though the far, dark side may be a sensation

Stay in our sightlines, account for libration


Oh Moon, ever dying, the corpse of old Theia

And corpse, ever living, cross lunar maria

A mind, cold and breathless, would quick be a loon

But you'll find no grey matter in this Zombie on the Moon

That's it. No more poems for you. Leave.