What’s it like to be a pigeon living on the street?
Crumbs collect and raindrops fall. Dodge the people’s feet.
Pigeon Perspective
Author: Frank Hubeny
I enjoy walking, poetry and short prose as well as taking pictures with my phone.
Artificial Intelligence
A pretty, plastic flower won’t grow a seed
Though we might think it could with just a glance.
If we insist, indeed, it has a chance,
That only means that we have been deceived.
Computers read, but cannot understand.
They speak, but they cannot be entertained
And nothing new to them has been explained
Though everything and more they have at hand.
So why should anyone presume that we
Could be replaced by what is not aware
Though sentimentalized as if it were?
The flower in the basement cannot be
As real as those that bloom in fresher air
Whom bees enjoy and breezes calmly stir.
Differentiating Subjective and Objective
The only thing some say that I can know
Is what’s subjective, and I’m fine with that,
But when I shoot electrons aiming at
A double slit I trust I still can show
I fired something definite although
If I could tell which slit each one went through
I’d change the way they must have done that, too,
Implying dumb reality must go.
Hey! I don’t mind. The world seems better when
The matter that I thought was dead depends
Upon some deeper Consciousness to be.
If that configuration’s better, then
It changes almost everything and sends
Me looking for those Eyes that look at me.
Retro Mind Enjoying Itself
Some say my mind is retro,
Beneath the avant-garde.
I like the way I dot my i’s
With drops of blood. I sympathize
With all the modern modes and lies.
It’s changing I find hard.
Fear of Flying
There once was a bird in a nest
Who thought he’d give flying a test.
“Any monkey can fly,”
Thought the bird way up high.
So he tried and he flew like the rest.
Eveningwocky
I based the following poem on Lewis Carroll’s Jabberwocky where the identical first and last stanzas tie together the nonsense words and nonsense quest and are themselves, more or less, as the reader chooses to read them, nonsense.
Eveningwocky
When evening scents the Mithal trees
To please the frickle nose of night,
With eager ease she wildeyed sees
The darkness through delight.
“Make haste and run away with me.
Your father feigntful wants us gone.
We’ll cross the Leewild Forest be
Away when dusk calls dawn.”
But she would not ride off with him
Though handly fair of husky form,
Though strongly slim, sweet Gildawim
Would not offend the norm.
“Ride now! The night is begging you.
The stilblink stars will shine till late.
And when we do, the Precids, too,
Will fantasize our fate.”
She hesitates behind the door
That firmly guards what’s in from harm
And on the floor the Shiftwindmor
Cries out in sly alarm:
“Beware the boy behind that man
Who calls you through that pretty face
Though pleasure can be wild….” She ran
And caught him through embrace.
When evening scents the Mithal trees
To please the frickle nose of night,
With eager ease she wildeyed sees
The darkness through delight.
Breakfast at the Outdoor Cafe
She brings coffee and croissants to eat
While fat pigeons peck food at my feet
Seeking crumbs out of love
I might drop from above
As I search for her smile when we greet.
Walking Through St. Paul’s Churchyard in Manhattan
The rain and wind attacked the stones
That marked where George and Sarah rest.
Somewhere their flesh and fragile bones
Decayed. The gravestones did their best
To let us know who’s lying where,
But weather wore their faces bare.
These markers still have much to tell:
The chapel stood when towers fell.
Eclipsing the Moon in April
It’s chilly in the morning. Welcome Spring
When April’s fresh-made flowers hint that soon
The trees will bud, but first a wondrous thing:
The shadow of our Earth will chill our Moon.
Poetry, Short Prose and Walking 