NaPoWriMo - 2018 - Day fifteen - Elevation

Elevation



Sublime it is to wait up here, so far beyond
the slightest thing that I might call a care.
Sometimes somebody speaks and I respond
the only way I can.  Oh yes, I dare—
if daring's what we still call it these days?
Oh there's another number passing: nine.
There is no heroism here.  Oh you say
that you would never take the role that's mine:

well fair enough and more fool you!  Now eight.
So many little lights I can see here;
all green, fortunately.  Not long to wait.
Seven the stars have never been so near.
I've complete faith in all the tech guys' arts.
Six.  Now the distant roar.  Main engines start.

NaPoWriMo - 2018 - Day fourteen - Ways in which...

Ways in which some middle managers have that clue which politicians lack


It beggars belief or rather
belief it is beggars us all.  If there was a fall [citation needed]
then I hypothesize that what that was was when we first believed;
the time we first felt fear and in result
did not say show me the evidence.  If you learn only one thing

today, let it be to say:
show me the evidence when the magic cleaning liquid man accosts;
show me the evidence when somebody claims they've found a god;
show me the evidence when red or blue politicals declaim.
Do not let credulity be your ground state,

there are no self-evident truths, to think such things
is hopelessly naive, as if great lumps of verity
lay all around on the landscape, as if the reason for landing on the moon
was merely to pick up any stray nuggets of fact
that might have been lying around.  Worse than these, however...

are pronouncements which do not reveal
their inner workings.  Some nationalistic arsehole jerks
his followers around by tugging strings labelled "pride" or "history"
as if it wasn't a complete mystery
why one should be proud of previous generations...

you never met and who, probably,
sneered at your ancestors in the street.  Or again some tabloid
which tacitly and silently assumes that everything was lovely
at some moment in the pre-antibiotic past
and would be once again at last

if only all the wrong people would leave.  Or worst of all
the leader, good or bad, who implies: that when
they make this one, simple change
then everything will be alright, now and forever.  Amen.
Well think again, oh clueless one

it doesn't matter that you have a plan, unless you also have:
the feasibility study, impact assessment, safety report, budget (guaranteed,
with mechanism for finding more when there's inevitably need), staffing requirements,
recruitment plan, risk analysis with planned mitigations for major problems,
dedicated expert on tap, committed supervisors of skill

and a clear definition, in advance
of what the objectives are and how they will be measured and who will do that and who will check and who will report it to the public and who will get the chop when the whole thing flops
(by which I mean you) -- unless you plan all that
and follow through

then basically don't waste your breath.
There is still some oxygen left,
but I can think of better uses for it.

NaPoWriMo - 2018 - Day thirteen - Luminiferous

Luminiferous

The assumption of a spatial plenum of luminiferous aether, rather than a spatial vacuum, provided the theoretical medium that was required by wave theories of light.

Wikipedia - Luminiferous Aether

Where a thing goes through another thing
it's easier all told should the second thing be missing,
presumed imaginary.  But... when it is a wave
that needs to pass, it's altogether less discretionary

we feel the need for something there to do the waving, invisible
and undetectable, as may be.  Some sort of space-based paving
across which light might stroll——or so the Victorians had it.
Not being the sorts to admit that things might come of nothing,

relativity of moral or physical sort, or any vacillation
of the gap.  When they looked into the void
they generally found nothing staring back.  It must
have been so comforting, to be so sure of everything

to know no wave/particle duality and never see
a single photon to have passed through both the slits.
These days, we tear their whole world picture into bits
and grind it underneath our heel.  We known that now

there's no such thing as a revealed truth.  We wrestle verities
from the Universe; admit we aren't the centre
of creation; feel strange elation in the lack
of an agenda.  It isn't you, and it definitely is not me

but we stare into the void of the future and we hope
that somewhere far downstream something sufficiently advanced
iterates an algorithm, converges on Bethlehem.