The Fraud Who Stole Freedom

Version 2 by Kent M Pitman

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Most voters in Freedom liked voting a lot,
  but the Fraud_{(dumb, dumb, dumb)}—who was fearful of voters—did not.

The Fraud hated Freedom, the whole Freedom spirit.
  Though if there’s a reason, we’re waiting to hear it.

It could be, perhaps, that his life was too soft.
  It could be his woodpecker wasn’t aloft.

Still, I think that the most likely cause, on the whole,
  may have been that his ego was out of control.

Whatever the reason--no frays or no lays,
  he logged on FraudSocial just needing some praise.

Staring down at his keys, the Fraud muttered aloud,
  at an enemy rally that had drawn quite a crowd.

“They’re making it up,” came his frustrated wail
  “They’re using A.I., but I’ll see they all fail.”

Soon the Fraud’s tiny fingers were whipping a potion.
  “I must find a way to set chaos in motion.”

“Not long ’til the time when the voters will go
  to the polls to elect me as king of the show.”

“But what if they don’t?” he thought with a scowl
  “I’ll have to derail them by calling a foul.”

“They’ll only be honest, if voting for me.
  All else is injustice, I’ll make them all see.”

“I’ll make women like me, as stars get to do.
  If they try to reject me, I’ll hasten to sue.”

“All men will revere me. I’ve bragged of much wealth,
  They’ll want to be near me, a stud in such health.”

And yet as he sat there, it stuck in his craw,
  Past vote counters failed him, they’d followed the law!

The more the Fraud sat there, the more he went bullshit.
  To make sure he won, he’d be needing to pull shit.

“I’ll mount a campaign, I’ll rally the masses.
  I’ll help them to see only I’ll save their asses”

“They’ll think it’s well-meant, say my threats are just kidding.
  But I’ll not relent ’til the world does my bidding.”

“At first I’ll just fraud about doubts that I’ve had.
  If that doesn’t work, I’ll allege ‘migrant chad.’ ”

“Whatever I say, my base will refraud me.
  At the end of the day, they’re just waiting to laud me.”

“I’ll fuss about taxes, I’ll make it sound bad.
  That it’s just about me they won’t see if they’re mad.”

“I’ll make some pronouncements that seem quite attractive
  But each of them will be, of course, quite extractive.”

“I’ll wheel and I’ll deal, they’ll be totally smitten,
  They’ll feel it for real by the time they get bitten.

He had a quick thought, which was all he could muster.
  He wasn't coherent, so padded with bluster.

But with bitterness honed on a long ago day,
  ’twasn’t long ’til he moaned, “I must make them all pay!”

So the Fraud thought his thought, and approved his own trick.
  A quick, slick, sick pick that was sure to off-tick.

He’d post infinite frauds, for his base, so expecting.
  They’d be riddled with lies, far too dense for rejecting.

And yet, like a train, in his Fraudulent brain
  came a painful refrain he could hardly restrain.

“What if my posts get some judge’s attention?
  They’re nudgy with me, I might get detention.”

The voice rambled on and he started to curse.
  Like most of his thoughts, it was more than one verse.

This thought made the Fraudster both itchy and twitchy.
  He needed some safety if things got too glitchy.

So again the Fraud brain did what only it could
  It began thinking fraudulence only it would.

Soon the Fraud made another plan, quick as could be.
  “I’ll sue any district not promised to me!”

“I’ll question their methods and forms of ID
  I’ll cry if they fix it, ‘It’s unfair to me!’”

Pennsylvania and Georgia, said the Fraud analytical...
  And if they sue back, I’ll say it’s political.

“To seal the deal fully, it’s time they all learn
  I can call on some bullies, and tables will turn.”

“But still it could fail,” thought the Fraud with no thrill,
  “Even that,” he then brightened, “is grist for my mill.”

“To cover a failure I must have a fallback.
  I’ll file more lawsuits and ask for a callback.”

“‘Elections can’t have a replay,’ they’ll say.
  They’ll throw it to Congress, where my guys hold sway.”

With his plan seeming ripe, the Fraud started to type
  And he typed and he typed ... and he typed hype-type type.

But then as he typed, he stopped with a hissing.
  “Even though perfect, some detail was missing.”

“I’m in need of a scandal.”
    The Fraud looked around.
  Though their scandals were scarce, …
    maybe … some … could be ‘found.’

He reached out to helpers, phoned ‘fellas’ he knew.
  “Saying just a few ... thousand ... will easily do,”

“We can’t conjure votes,” they said with a shock.
  They never imagined they’d have such a talk.

The fraud seemed impatient, and primped his thin ‘hair.’
  “Not votes, I need scandals, then all will be fair!”

Real billionaires joined, and they funded each fake,
  they knew at the end there were jackpots at stake.

In search of more dirt, the Fraud urgently browsed.
  Just kidding. His mob did. As he mostly drowsed.

Soon tidbits were offered that he could enfraud,
  And they sent him their bills, which he’d hastily wad.

He frauded out why, and he frauded out wherefore.
  He pressed REFRAUD for all, shrugging, “that’s what it’s there for.”

He posted it all. He posted it twice.
  Then he posted some more. And he posted that thrice.

“I’ll show the whole world there’s conspiracy brewing,
  They’ll stick to their stories but I’ll see their doing.”

The Fraud posted and pasted, he pasted and posted,
  Whatever they answered, he always out-mosted.

He pasted and wasted and always lambasted,
  The Fraud was dead set to see victory tasted.

He made some big lies, from whole cloth. They spread.
  And deep-faked some horns on his enemy’s head.

He frauded as Guests, sometimes Red, sometimes Blue,
  and told all who’d listen the rumors were true.

A batallion of bots was unleashed ’round the world,
  They amplified stories and insults were hurled.

He spammed, and he slammed, and he made people stammer.
  “Put the Fraud in a slammer,” a few dared to yammer.

Charges were leveled with harrowing proof,
  But the Fraud called on lawyers who kept him aloof.

Some laws were invoked that had long lacked a use,
  But he argued that singling him out was abuse.

And the public agreed with a sort of a groan
  “A law isn’t fair once a need has been shown.”

A piece at a time, all shame was erased.
  Morality fell and was crudely replaced.

Then pretense was made for the High Court to enter.
  They’d bided their time ’til they came front and center.

They made up some lies about founders’ intent,
  They’d never admit just how much they’d been bent.

Not trusting the Congress, they called it themselves
  An outcome so gifty, ’twas worthy of elves.

They said they avoided a violent coup.
  Too bad they relinquished democracy, too.

Day One saw the Fraud in his dictator best,
  But soon Twenty-Five was put to the test.

They tossed him from office that very same day,
  And courts set to work at lifting each stay.

Back at the White House there'd be quite a scramble,
  The public was shocked they'd received no preamble.

The Snake who stepped up, no one’d looked at too seriously
  It was quite a surprise when he acted imperiously.

Most thought at this point, things would go back to norm.
  But really this only began the real storm.

He’d planned a big Project and started with zeal
  What only his patrons had thought would be real.

This wasn’t a Seuss tale, so ended up ugly.
  It’s hard to imagine a world quite so thugly.

For the rest of the tale, read Atwood’s banned book
  It shows the dark path society took.

The Fraud and the Snake hadn’t stopped crime at all.
  They’d only made Freedom first tumble, then fall.

It turned out the things that the Fraud had foretold,
  Were lies propagated so merchandise sold.

People learned a hard lesson, and cried boo hoo hoo.
  But nothing they tried could build Freedom anew.

And still to this day, those poor souls, so impacted,
  wonder what would be different if only they’d acted.

---

Copyright © 2024 Kent M Pitman. All Rights Reserved.

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Strange Poetry and ChatGPT

I should say as context that I had been having a conversation on Mastodon in which I got the idea to write a poem that was somehow both a haiku and a limerick. I wrote the following myself. (The ChatGPT part comes later.) I've numbered the lines to make it more intelligible:

   0   There once was a would-be haiku
   1   Wedged late in a lim'rick venue
   2   Ending a hero
   3   Numbered from zero
   4   Its lines went three, four and two

If it helps in understanding it, I went on to say in the other forum, the haiku to be extracted and rearranged is this one:

  Numbered from zero
   Its lines went three, four and two
    Ending a hero

But while I'm proud I was able to come up with anything that was both limerick and haiku, I have to admit it's a more boring haiku than I'd aspired to. So I later wondered if ChatGPT could help me do better. That's what led to the following odd exchange a few days ago, in which it's clear that ChatGPT can do amazing things in some ways, yet be hampered with sometimes the simplest of things in others.

I came to wonder through this if it even knows what a syllable is. Perhaps it has just seen so many haikus that it doesn't need to count, and when asked to write something similar to, but not the same as, a 5-7-5 haiku, it doesn't know what the goal is at all?

See what you think...

write a haiku about the beauty of a snowy day

Snowflakes dance down
Peaceful white blanket unfolds
Winter's pure delight

write a limerick in which the last three lines, if rearranged, would be syntactically valid as a haiku and in which the first two lines introduce that haiku.

In the park, a snowflake lands
A symbol of winter's grace
Peaceful, it descends
Covering earth's face with white
Nature's beauty in sight.

that isn't quite right. in a limerick, the first, second, and fifth line are long. so to embed a haiku in a limerick, the embedded haiku will have to use the form 5-5-7.

Note that the apology here is part of the limerick! Is that it being clever or just revealing it doesn't know the difference between the task and related meta-conversation?

Oh, my apologies, I see
Let me write it now correctly
A snowflake takes its flight
Brings peace to the winter night
In a dance of grace, so free.

Write a fresh 5-5-7 haiku, in other words with the long line being last.

Beneath a winter sky
Snowflakes gently fall like dreams
Peaceful and serene.

In a 5-5-7 haiku, the second and third lines are exchanged.

Gently falling snowflakes
Beneath a peaceful winter sky
Serene dreams descend.

No. It should say "Gently falling snowflakes. / Serene dreams descend / Beneath a peaceful winter sky." so that 5-5-7 describe the number of syllables in each line, 5 for line 1, 5 for line 2, and 7 for line 3.

Gently falling snowflakes,
Serene dreams descend,
Beneath a peaceful winter sky.

Yes, now modify the poem so the first and second lines rhyme.

Snowflakes fall, so gentle and light,
Peaceful dreams take flight in the night.
Beneath winter skies so serene,
Nature's beauty, a lovely scene.

But it should still be a 5-5-7 haiku.

Falling snowflakes, so pure,
Peaceful dreams that softly tour,
Beneath winter sky serene.

In a 5-5-7 haiku, there are 5 syllables for line 1, 5 syllables for line 2, and 7 syllables for line 3.

Snowflakes dance, so light and slow
Peaceful dreams, a winter's glow
Beneath the sky, so serene and bright.

That is a 7-7-9 haiku you wrote. Tighten it up into a 5-5-7 haiku by using fewer syllables.

Snowflakes twirl, light and slow
Dreams of peace, a winter's show
Beneath the sky, serene and bright.

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Author's Notes:

Thanks to Madeleine Begun Kane for writing a haiku about haikus and limericks and putting it on Mastodon, which inspired me to write my own original poem and to have the enclosed conversation.

It's fascinating out chance events like that influence our lives. My whole career has been littered with chance events that were as important as anything planned. (Programming language enthusists might enjoy my paper Common Lisp: The Untold Story, a record of an invited talk I gave at the 50th Anniversary of Lisp conference, where I recount a number of those. No, not in poetry form. Poetry, and especially a haiku, is a kind of apology or penance that I do to balance the fact that some of my other writings are quite long.)

There is some additional discussion of this blog post and ChatGPT in general where I mentioned it on Mastodon.

You can try ChatGPT here if you want.

All of the "haiku" in here is really senryu.

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Gratitude and Life's Poetry

Once born, people push on the world and it pushes back. We are not born expecting a specific number of arms or fingers. If born with an extra, we use it and see what it does. We touch, feel, smile, recoil. But it's a dialog of sorts with the world. What we are and become is a product of this give and take that predates speech, which itself is also arranged in dialog of speaking and hearing, and tying meaning to how our interactions proceed.

Gratitude is part of a more abstract dialog that follows once we have the mechanics down. People, and later society or its pieces, do things for us, and we do things in return. Sometimes the thing we do in return is an act, sometimes a promise, sometimes an acknowledgment of gratitude. But gratitude seems one of the words in the abstract vocabulary of social participation. We encourage it because it helps us learn and sustain our place in society. When there is no specific act to return, its use preserves the meter of the verse that ebb and flow that is polite society's ever-being-written poem. Omitted, the rhythm is off.

An Odd Example

I sometimes ponder the peculiar ritual where I am going through a door and I see you behind me. You're too far back to take it, yet I hold the door. You must run to grab it. It's a pain for me to hold it, and a hassle for you to run ahead. It serves no one in an obvious way, yet we all do it with some regularity, and mostly we all tolerate it as if it were a favor. Why should that be?

Maybe empathy for having lived the reverse.

But also I think it's because the ritual of it in a society of strangers reinforces to someone you don't know that you are not alone in chaos, but among friendly people who agree on--if nothing else--some social conventions. You knew nothing of me, I nothing of you, yet now you know that I'm no beast but someone who would, if called upon, behave by shared rules of social behavior. And I know of you and your gratitude for this pointless act that you likewise subscribe to these unwritten rules, that you will go out of your way for strangers. So we part friends, a little less alone in the chaos of the day. It seems like nothing exchanged, but really the payload is subtle and abstract, that people and society matter, that we acknowledge each other's dignity.

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The power is out today at my house after a big storm last night. That leaves me little to do, but I am taking an online class at FutureLearn entitled What Is Character? Virtue Ethics in Education, and this essay is something I wrote in response to a discussion about the nature and purpose of Gratitude. I was happy with what I wrote and thought it worth sharing here. I would also recommend the course to anyone interested in ethics, and especially ethics in education. As I write this postscript, here in the dim light of the aforementioned power outage, the course has just started a couple days ago, so you could quickly catch up.

Impeachment Poetry

A tweet written in limerick led me to respond in kind:

After laws broken daily for years,
“Shocked, Shocked” are a Speaker and peers.
  Now they’ll risk reelection,
  raising one thin objection.
“Too little, too late” are my fears.

Limerick is not my preferred format. I usually prefer haiku, or (as here) senryu. There's something calmer and more elegant about it. So I also tweeted a senryu, perhaps as apology for the limerick above:

Crimes mount by the day.
  Biden chides, “soon, it's too much.”
What was it before?

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Solitude Eluded

Solitude stalks me,
leaving me never alone.
Then you scare it off.

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Plutocratic Denial

First sea level came for the islanders, and I continued to deny—
   Because “those people” are poor, and this is their lot in life.

Then hurricanes took out some coastal cities, and I continued to deny—
   Because I had business elsewhere, so got in my jet and steered clear.

Then fires came for rich homes in California, and I continued to deny—
   Because I was conservative, and California was full of liberals.

Then the heat took farms and spiked food prices, but I continued to deny—
   Because this was why one hoards cash, to weather rough times.

Then, finally, no one came to my dinner parties.
   Too busy “just surviving” they said,
      those with the good manners to return an RSVP.
      What was the world coming to?
   In this moment I had an epiphany—
      This might actually involve me!
      How inconvenient, this sudden wave of truth.

By the time it all came tumbling in on me, supply chains had folded
      and there was no one left even to bribe.
   Was I the last? Would anyone read this? No way to know.
   But, I smiled, neither anyone left to deny
      that this had been just a bad run of weather.
   Nothing more.

 

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Inspired in form and spirit, of course, by Martin Niemöller's post-WWII poem “First they came...”

Collusion illusion allusion elusion

In response to a tweet by @Limericking, I wrote this limerick in a tweet:

By treasonous channels he learned
His opponent was soon to be burned.
Though sad he’d not led it,
He lusted for credit.
And with that collusion, votes turned.

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Limited-Time Offer

Climate is cancer.
Delay is hope we've squandered.
We can't buy it back.

#ParisAccord

Originally published to Twitter in response to a tweet by David Brin.

Tenuous Tenacity

Life is a calm room,
 hurricane raging outside,
 paper walls between.

Crayola Paradise Lost

We moved between cool cubes of crisp White after White, neatly aligned,
  topped by meticulous matrices of Indian Red,
    shielding us from the melting heat of suspended Lemon Yellow.

Fading memory conveniently omits the incessant Gray interlopers,
  puffs of wet that daily battle to deny Sky Blue its due dominance above.
    My mind relaxes in shaded memories of only richest Blue.

The tropics surprised me, too, with foliage of Sepia and Yellow Orange,
  even as the defining tapestry was a Forest Green so out-of-the-box lush,
    that the Box Itself later cried for redesign to express such riches:

Jungle Green,
  Tropical Rain Forest,
    even Mango Tango to match the gooey feel
                that danced between my sandaled toes.

A never-ending strip of White along the edge of the Universe,
  ten yards wide, glistening with myriad microscopic flecks of Silver,
    a barrier against the vast Blue Green.

Beyond that loomed a world
  comfortably out of childhood’s sight,
    and incompatible with crayon happiness.

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Originally published September 1, 2014 at Open Salon, where I wrote under my own name, Kent Pitman.

Crayola® is a registered trademark of Crayola LLC.

Tags (from Open Salon): youth, memory, recollection, recall, memoir, remembrance, color, colorful, colour, colourful, vivid, impressions, crayola, crayons, crayola crayons, poem, poetry, panama, canal zone, panama canal zone, utopia, paradise, paradise lost, simple, simplicity, tropical, mango, jungle, ocean, beach, sand, sun, sky, rain forest

Background & Context: I took a MOOC online course called How Writers Write Poetry at the University of Iowa’s online arm, Writing University. It was a lot of fun. Most of the lectures and exercises were interesting and useful, as was the the discussion with fellow students and occasional site moderators. This is one of several poems I wrote as part of the class exercises.

They have a course coming up soon called How Writers Write Fiction. It starts Friday, September 26 and runs two months to Friday, November 21.

Memory is a fragile thing, and even those memories we intend to share are difficult to articulate. However, for better or worse, this poem above is my attempt to share some memories of my days in the Panama Canal Zone in the mid 1970’s. The photo below is cropped from a photo I got from a friend, which he represents as being, like my memories, quite old. In any case, he thought it has fallen into the public domain, though I can’t easily verify that. My memories of the simple, crisply drawn colors that characterized that lovely place and time inspired me to write the poem. The photo illustrates a little of that, and the poem hopefully gives you a sense of the full palette.

Speaking of palettes, the Crayola® collection of 64 colors from the time of my youth is something I tried to stick to in the poem. In this regard, I relied on some online lists like those in Wikipedia’s List of Crayola Crayon Colors and another that wasn't quite as complete but was easier to reference. Another offered the timeline in easy form, and still another was just visually compelling, not to mention contained useful RGB values.

A Turn at the Darkness

Every poet has died.

I mourn that this night has come.
Yet, as I mourn, I see the morning light.
Poets die, but poetry lives.

Poetry is humanity’s plight.
It is the human fight,
 sacred duty and cherished right.
At times at risk of sounding trite.
Yet, even so, both might and light.

Life itself is poetry played out,
 a chain of existence extending across time,
  each of us the next precious link,
   paced and metered.
We are life’s stanzas,
 but our each existence is a fractally recurring chain as well,
  a daily rhythm of linked events,
   chaos out of which we struggle to see reason and achieve rhyme,
    to distill verse from adversity.
Our personal poems join to form a greater epic poem.

We stand as witness to the miracle of this chain’s creation,
 even as we are the chain itself.
We play within its parts,
 and ultimately we play without them.

Awed by the oddity that is the world around us,
 we turn to poetry for context,
   for understanding,
   for perspective,
   for love,
   and for acceptance.

From first words spoken around a fire,
 to modern social gatherings,
  we have only each other,
   —and our poetry.

Who is next we ask, looking around the room?
 Who will speak for us, to stay the darkness,
  bringing the light, even becoming it,
   if only for this moment.

Maya Angelou spoke,
 and brought such light.
Now she is dead,
 but she is also born—

Her life’s text, under constant revision,
 is finally published.

Her link in life’s chain is complete.

And what a joy to have been alive for its creation.

She was EveryPoet, and now EveryPoet has died.
 Her time to stand and speak against the night has run its course.
Her turn played out, she sits to rest.
 But we are left inspired.

She was EveryPoet,
 but every poet will rise in her place.

Even from death’s cage,
 the legacy of EveryPoet sings.
She sings to each of us,
 challenging us to spend our lifetimes actually living,
  seizing the stage and strutting proudly in the light awhile,
   before the coming night.

What option is there?
 Only these:
  Next to live, or
  next to die.

Who will speak next?

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Author's Note: Originally published July 4, 2014 at Open Salon, where I wrote under my own name, Kent Pitman.

Tags (from Open Salon): comforting, comfort, entertainment, englightenment, light, against the darkness, darkness, everypoet, every poet, storytelling, story, taking a stand, stand, fear, cave, society, fellowship, camaraderie, comradery, love, companionship, sisterhood, brotherhood, inspiration, human condition, humanity, power, loneliness, death, life, tribute, death, maya angelou, angelou, philosophy, art, poetry, poem

Forgive Me

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This was a valentire I made for my wife in 2012.

Originally published February 14, 2012 at Open Salon, where I wrote under my own name, Kent Pitman.

Tags (from Open Salon): poem, poetry, art, valentine's day, valentine, card, commercialism, 800, eight hundred, florists, eflorists, flowers, love, committed, commitment, life, friendship, friend, celebrate, celebration, bauble, ardor, passion, i love you, circumscribe, circumscribed, circumscribing, circumscription, heart, negative, inverse, inverted, negative space, empty space

On Twitter

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Originally published January 12, 2012 on Twitter, as part of my background image, not a tweet. I am @KentPitman there if you'd like to follow me.

The title, added later, is a pun. The haiku is both a comment on Twitter, and a celebration of my arrival on Twitter.

I've since come to believe that expressing ideas in such a short space, what some people call micro-blogging, is a legitimate art form. Nonetheless, I still think the hashtags intrude. Their use is pragmatic, not aesthetic. —kmp 18-Jan-2016

The Tao of AutoCorrectivity

This was written for RomanticPoetess...

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Originally published July 30, 2011 at Open Salon, where I wrote under my own name, Kent Pitman.

Tags (from Open Salon): microsoft, microsoft word, ms word, ms/word, word, technology, helpful, spell, spelling, spelling correction, spell check, spell checker, grammar, grammar check, grammar checker, grammar checking, word choice, override, overriding, fix, fixing, check, checker, checking, autocorrect, auto correct, auto-correct, autocorrectivity

What Love Endures

Background

This is not a traditional-style Valentine’s Day poem.

I originally wrote this as prose, years ago, for submission to another forum, one that had solicited for various categories of extremely short stories, including a call for stories of no more than 150 characters. This one uses 146 characters, just so you don’t have to count. My submission was rejected by the editors of that other forum, and I shelved it for a time.

As I finally publish it, I thought perhaps the juxtaposition of today (Friday the 13th of February, 2009) and tomorrow (Valentine’s Day) would offer readers a chance to reflect on the notion that not all love stories are played out with chocolate hearts and red roses.

To my surprise, a friend who once previewed this work referred to it as a poem rather than a short story. On reflection, I decided that almost anything so textually short was at risk of being thought of in such a way. Rather than fight it, I embraced the idea and broke the lines in free verse style. But you may refer to it either way, as prose or poem, with my thanks for taking the time to read it at all.

By the way, the photo and artistic composition are my own work as well.

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Originally published February 13, 2009 at Open Salon, where I wrote under my own name, Kent Pitman.

Tags (from Open Salon): love, caring, poem, poetry, raped, aftermath of rape, rape aftermath, emotional scars, emotional scars, rape survivor, sex, intimacy, strained, difficult, pain

The URLs of the Mind

I moved a lot growing up,
so I didn't like throwing things away.
I liked collecting things—until finally
they made things stamped “COLLECTIBLE.”
The day of collecting was past.

I still collected things, but
I came to seize those days where
I caught myself throwing something out
that I hadn't expected to.
Dropping everything,
I'd furiously rush to throw away more,
before the packratishness returned.

Some things I couldn't get rid of, though.
They were reminders of times past,
pointers into a tangled web of human memory,
the URLs of the mind.

To lose them would be to lose the memory,
or perhaps just to lose the opportunity
to accidentally click through—
revisiting times past.

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It's why we're all so confused when someone dies.

Their things seemed so important the day before.
Now we want to treat them reverently,
but we can't.
There's nothing left to access.

The value was within the person,
a human being,
human experiences.
Once open for service,
now finally closed forever to visitors.

These artifacts of experience
performed their function
only for the one (or the few) who participated
in the memory's creation,
and to whom it had been entrusted.

Gone the site of our memory,
the possessions we amass
are but 404 URLs.

---

Packrat that I am,
it's sometimes been
that I could let the thing go,
keeping just the picture.
A tinyurl.

So after traveling on business for years,
I felt sure that I was destined
to open up a little shop
to sell all those little hotel soaps
and little hotel shampoos.

I finally had to let go of that idea.
They were taking up too much space!
But first, I took a snapshot
to remember.

Such images,
though sometimes art themselves,
as keys are ephemeral.

Only I
have the password
to the protected site
where the memory lingers.

---

Author's Note: If you got value from this post, please “Share” it.

Originally published October 7, 2008 at Open Salon, where I wrote under my own name, Kent Pitman.

Tags (from Open Salon): poem, poetry, memory, remembering, photos, photographs, death, net, internet, url, tinyurl, 404, hotel soap, hotel shampoo

Pace of Change

One of the perils of business success is that when you have a large installed base of users, you have to be very careful about making changes faster than the user community can absorb them.

I wrote this as a sort of reminder of that truth.

---

Author's Note: If you got value from this post, please “Share” it.

This was written May 25, 2006, but not published to the web until October 24, 2019.