Tag Archives: Machine

Your Dishwasher’s Advocate

3 Replies

For the PAD challenge, we are to write a poem about a machine.

Your Dishwasher’s Advocate

Cycle after cycle, they clean our dirty dishes
yet do we ever think about acceding to their wishes?
Maybe they, too, have appetites, and I sometimes think perhaps,
they were patiently waiting for their favorite scraps.

A bit of rich spaghetti sauce, a dollop of our mousse,
a little bit of buttered bread or rib eye’s savory juice
might have fulfilled their evening’s dreams or might have made their day,
But instead we diligently swab it all away!

No rich reward for faithful servants waiting for our scraps.
No satifsfactory searches for tidbits left in gaps.
And so they go another day, our faithful old machines,
without a taste of hamburgers or beets or nectarines.

They cannot live on water alone. Those soapsuds have no savor.
And so the next time when you scrape, please do your pal a favor.
Leave a few scraps on the plate. Don’t clean too well those tines.
Think about your faithful friend who oh too rarely dines.

Leave your dishwasher a tip—something on which to sup.
Leave wine dregs in your goblets and leave them facing up!
Leave rice grains in your rice bowl. Do not clear that sauce away.
Being less efficient, will make your Maytag’s day.

If your wife makes a kerfuffle over the job you do,
remind her it is you that’s here scraping off the goo.
Take her by the shoulders and deflect her view.
Your dishwasher is grateful for it every time you do!

 

Luddite (Within Reason)

12 Replies

Luddite (Within Reason)

Resurrect the Luddite gene!
Raise the axe! Kill the machine!
Its use is seldom credible
in products that are edible.

A bread machine for making bread?
Ban that idea from your head.
Bread manufactured should be banned.
The nobler loaf is shaped by hand.

Lasagna, too, it is a fact,
is better manually stacked.
Those frozen ones from Costco? Toss ‘em!
For no machine knows how to sauce ‘em!

Torillas handmade pat by pat?
You simply can’t improve on that.
But I admit I’m not that keen
on ones that come from a machine.

South of the border, arts abound
on almost every wall they’re found.
All over town, the artists stand
creating murals there by hand.

Art that’s produced digitally?
It will simply never be
as satisfactory to me
as this handmade artistry.

The stately dome, even and round,
in Mexico is often found.
With bricks, cement and lime and sand—
it’s true that they are made by hand!

I admit that a brick wall
is hardly any view at all.
The only worse thing in a town
is when you find one tumbled down!

But Mexico excels at walls.
Hand-stacked, a stone wall rarely falls.
And they are things of beauty, too,
and add, not detract, from the view.

I find that I can best assuage
my aches with a hands-on massage.
Our massage chair bought for beaucoup bucks?
Truthfully? It really sucks.

And yet, I know that many lean
in preference to the machine.
I must admit, though I am wary,
that certain ones are necessary.

Elevators beat the stairs.
Electric shavers best cut hairs.
(Those signs extolling Burma Shave
belong outside a caveman’s cave.)

And I admit the movie sector
clearly needs its film projector.
Doctors? X-rays. Dentists? Drills.
Pharmacists? Machine-made pills.

And I am sure I’d really balk
If I were forced to always walk,
so cars and trucks would make my list
of machines that should exist.

I could live if forced to brave
this world without my microwave,
but take my Wifi? Don’t you dare!!!
Some things are better sent by air!

The Prompt: Handmade Tales—Automation has made it possible to produce so many objects — from bread to shoes — without the intervention of human hands (assuming that pressing a button doesn’t count). What things do you still prefer in their traditional, handmade version?