Ode to a Laptop Screen (Neither Greek nor an Urn)

Ode to a Laptop Screen

(With further apologies to Keat's Ode on a Grecian Urn)
How still the keyboard sits in quietness,
The bastard-child of touch and typist time,
Selectric’s history, now faster express
A speedy tale of PCs in our rhyme:
What typist’s legend haunts about thy shape
Of dictation tedious stories told?
The processing of words on screen
Stopped the tedious hard print cold!
Of liquid paper and self correcting tape,
Ancient carbon paper, what do those mean?

Hard memories are sweet, but those with speed
Are sweeter still, so see that RAM is fast;
Not just the min but max of giga need,
With hertz to spare and memory to last
If lights go out. This byte-ful brain
Is more than scribing words to print:
Typewriters checked no words or syntax;
Editing and cleaning up’s a lesser strain
Though handwriting and spelling now are lax.
Each product is enriched by triple-W mint.

Ah happy, happy search that has a spread
Of information never seen before,
To questions strange we once did dread:
Answers accumulate and more and more.
Oh happy internet with many useful sites
For ever up and there to be enjoy’d
From sciences and hobbies, to habits weird
Freedom’s reaching new populist heights:
Ever ready, for many purposes employed.
(What Whole Earth Catalog pioneered ?)

Where goest we in this computer age?
To what employ these screens and text?
Social media reflect common ills and rage,
Children’s online uses have adults perplexed.
Spleen notes burst, bigotry explodes online,
Facebook flames and Twitter tiffs
Are constant proof of obvious hates
Posts can span the odious to sublime
Most reactions and submissions are riffs
Of common prejudices, all that irates.

O Laptop! My work & play partner dear,
How helpful two-score years ago you’d been
When college papers had me filled with fear.
With online resources, five footnotes are thin.
Optimist genes drive me to vision of hope:
When old age shall this generation waste,
The net shall remain, in midst of other woe
Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou say’st,
“Seek out the truth, that’s your duty, --that is all
Ye search online, and all ye need to know.”

Ode on a Freethinker’s Burn

Ode on a Freethinker’s Burn
(Patterned after Keat’s Ode On a Grecian Urn)

Thou shrill unvarnished bride of godliness,
Thou poster-child of faith’s thought crime,
Christian witness who must always express
A bible-tale, and bring up Jesus every time:
That grief-fringed legend you can’t escape
Of pain and death, the fabled cross
And resurrection: relived each year,
With human sin the guilty cause.
What mad pursuit? What jaws of devil gape?
What sin occasions? What hellish fear?

Lacerations bleed, but pricks of mind
Are deeper, therefore, the guilt you lay on
One sensitive to words is more unkind.
So bearer of bad tidings, begone.
Fundamental Christian you must leave.
Thy song be silenced: I don’t care
To hear of virgin birth nor mystic bliss,
Your proofless news are bad for me: I grieve
For other victims of your treacherous kiss,
You don’t bring peace, I must declare.

Ah, happy, happy thoughts! That had me shed
Your myths, and ever bid the faith adieu;
And, happy intellect unwearied,
For ever giving thoughts for ever new;
What happy freedom, unfettered love!
No more wasted days in prayer employed,
No more nights in tortured guilt
No more hell below, heaven above
The heart is light, unburdened, buoyed,
A freedom song sung with human lilt.

Why return to ancient tale of sacrifice?
To painful altar, to egregious priest?
Think thou I’m vulnerable to lies
With plastered saints and cherubs friezed?
All parables and sermons I deplore;
Each prayer and litany I reject
I’m happy with my limits human.
The altar of scientific wisdom I adore
To hardwon evolutions I genuflect
No gods gave rigor to this acumen.

O Atheist thought! Fair attitude! By breed
Of bright wit humans ever wrought,
With evidence and rigor, no ghostly need;
Churches’ psalm dost interrupt our thought
With stolid myths: be silent now!
When death comes and those worms call,
Our findings will remain, amidst your woe
Of sins and deities, and how in prayer to bow.
Reason brings truth, truth reason, -- that is all
I know on earth, and all I need to know.