Wetware software hardware
how hard do we have to be?
Programmed by the stochastic chatter of evolution
form fitting function,
almost.
Self replicating semi-autonomous robots.
purposed by deoxyribonucleic acid,
the software exists to
protect itself
not us.
Copyright © 2019 Kim Whysall-Hammond
Granite moon
Grey and old
Silent sentinel
Forever cold
Spinning orbit
Spiralling away
Shining ghostlike
At break of day
Copyright © 2019 Kim Whysall-Hammond
In the middle of the bright Atlantic
Floating on the swell between island volcanoes
Beneath reflective surface tension
Silvered gas bubbles catch the light
And, across the issuing rift
A long snake of data cable
Broken sheared twisted
As the gas breaks the surface
We hear voices
Blogs bubbling to the top
Instructions to buy or sell
A thousand tiny voices
Sparkling in the sunshine
Several parrot fish swim by
Next day when snorkeling
I fancy I hear fish blogging
Copyright © 2016 Kim Whysall-Hammond
This poem was published by the wonderful Helen Ivory on Ink, Sweat and Tears: http://www.inksweatandtears.co.uk/pages/?p=12491
I have another published poem! Thank you to Tristran Moss for including my poem ‘Green’ in the Environs issue of Snakeskin:
Born not in darkness but in a glory of light
glowing plasma heralding
time to come.
Wrapped in dust, avidly gravitating
acquiring debris, gathering and heating
shaping, moulding
to planetary status.
Time builds further complexities
molecular forms, moving, reproducing
that bloom in awareness
become intelligences
who eventually come to know
that stars are
born not in darkness but in a glory of light.
Copyright © 2019 Kim Whysall-Hammond
Deep in space-time, she awakes
throws off her mantle of gas
explodes onto the scene
young, hot
burning high
Accrues fans, slaves in her orbit
flares up occasionally
bloats as her diet changes,
sinks into middle age
ends catastrophically
Copyright © 2019 Kim Whysall-Hammond
Folk tales of little people abound
Retreating to the deep Earth
Now and then to emerge and engage
Ensnare or enslave
With trickery or with passion
Peripatetic you may have been
Leaving small trace of your lives
But deep in an African cave
We have found you
Naledi, little stars
We term the women who reclaimed you to the light
Underground astronauts
Yet you carried your beloved dead here
Through narrow clefts, over parlous depths
To lay them tenderly down to rest
As we stare into our deep past
And find you, Homo Naledi
Those of us who wonder
Those of us who marvel
Are ensnared and enamoured
Copyright © 2017 Kim Whysall-Hammond
The discovery of fossils of a new human species (Homo Naledi) is, in itself, a fascinating story. But why they are so ‘cool’ is very well explained by our fellow blogger on Fossil History at https://fossilhistory.wordpress.com/2015/09/10/homo-naledi-why-these-fossils-are-so-friggen-cool/
National Geographic describes them as “A fully modern hand sported wackily curved fingers, fit for a creature climbing trees. The shoulders were apish too, and the widely flaring blades of the pelvis were as primitive as Lucy’s—but the bottom of the same pelvis looked like a modern human’s. The leg bones started out shaped like an australopithecine’s but gathered modernity as they descended toward the ground. The feet were virtually indistinguishable from our own.”
Architects plant their imagination, weld their poems on rock,
Clamp them to the skidding rim of the world and anchor them down to its core;
Leave more than the painter’s or poet’s snail-bright trail on a friable leaf;
Can build their chrysalis round them – stand in their sculpture’s belly.
They see through stone, they cage and partition air, they cross-rig space
With footholds, planks for a dance; yet their maze, their flying trapeze
Is pinned to the centre. They write their euclidean music standing
With a hand on a cornice of cloud, themselves set fast, earth-square.
I am a rain drop.
Imagine raindrops
you see tears
but clouds do not cry.
Over England they excrete
ice crystals that melt
drop and tumble
balling, falling.
Surface tension
marries colliding drops
yet divorce is common.
Plummeting, flattening
rain discs hit the London pavement
lose their identity
in puddles and pools.
Copyright © 2018 Kim Whysall-Hammond
Published at Fourth and Sycamore in July 2018.
Orbital telescopes send home images
nebulae, glowing with colour
last remnants of fat, dying, exploded stars
lingering across the night sky
lighted by millennia old catastrophe
They are where the magic happens
atoms forged in burnt out stars
a deathbed bequest that has made us all
Copyright © 2018 Kim Whysall-Hammond
