more Robert Black poetry

Unrepairable Remark

An impossible task confronts me,
To piece together an unusual jigsaw:
A mirror that is now smashed.

Nobody knows where it broke
Fragmented clues tell a confused story,
A sentence here, a word there,
A paragraph which makes me stop and stare.

Must find some beginning amidst this disorder,
But the reticent onlookers constantly change their story.
I can find no harmony amongst these broken lives
Sharp "hello's" and forced smiles.

Can you ever undo what is done?
No, you can never repair what was never there.
A fragile gloss with a rough sense of purpose,
But now it's broken all is lost.

I can no longer see myself in their midst,
"That's seven years bad luck", mutters the bin
As the drunken chaotic puzzle of self-pity crashes in.

Still Life

The cleaner with the yellow feather duster
Was delicately trying to restore an art expert
( who'd been stunned by a new metaphor for life )
When a tourist wearing rose tinted spectacles
Noticed the 'metaphor' was back to front.

So a security guard with an arresting personality
Stepped forward and turned the tourist up side down.
And the moral of our story ( if needs be one ) is this:
"DO NOT DISTURB" signs are dangerous things
to be left laying around in art galleries
( especially one which has had "DO NOT"
struck out, and "UNDO" added ).

The Cyber-Shore

He mails e-mails by the c-shore
And dreams of the time when he first met Shelby
(their ships passed in cyberspace at the web dating agency),
And though she was always positive, and he slightly negative,
They managed to conduct a r-e-l-a-t-i-o-n-s-h-i-p over the internet...
Until one fateful day when they decided to exchange photographs
(he sent his, but when he asked to see Shel's she said no).

That might be waiting to go
Bump in the night.

The Nelephant 9000 Computer #1

"I think, therefore I'm on",
said the Artificial Intelligence machine,
"Are there any questions you want me to answer?
Ask me anything you like. Anything at all".
"I'm all at sixes and sevens today", sighed the operator.
"Aha!", said the computer, as it clicked and whirred,
"The answer is forty-two!".

The Nelephant 9000 Computer #2

The misguided missile blundered into a tree
Where it perches nervously, smoking like a cigarette,
Till a ladder appears, and a white-breasted boffin climbs up
And taps on the metal casing... then a lense looks out...
And a moment later the Nelephant 9000 computer shouts,
"Help! Some fool's connected me up to a mouse!".