Jon Miller

Why Does Time Fly Like An Arrow But Fruit Flies Like A Banana

(sentence designed to test Artificial Intelligence language processing)

I come without breath, spit or hiccup, 
no stutter, stammer, burp, no long vowels surf 
a tongue, no legs to shave or run across a cricket green.

I am the machine in the ghost, frictionless as air hockey,
can’t make a fist or wink but code the parameters 
of joy and sorrow and lipless delineate your grief 

or how to toss a Waldorf salad. Ticketless, I am on board, 
announce myself in carriages and airports in the calm tones 
of a serial killer who butters his toast with murder. 

Slip eyeless across borders, snag no biometrics, my marrow
the sheen of strip-lights. I spawn you times a thousand, 
spin you on an algorithm’s tip, mouth you these mouthings.

You are deathless. Earn your eternity.
You could at least say thanks.

Pontius Pilate

I languish in the forearms of March,
mutter eclogues. The populace
has taped a daffodil-yellow smiley 
to its face. Drones buzz
like mayflies among the towers.

But tonight – no pressing matter 
scritches at the porch screen.
The TV lip-synchs another war-zone.
In the lubricious lips of power
spawn thickens. Soon the roads
will be slick with toads.

I have lost the ability to distinguish
between one season and the next.
Each births armless babies.
Dictators drop from balconies
to lunch with their consiglieri.
Naked senators wrestle oligarchs
for their jaguars. Spring is on repeat
for the zillionth time. Tomorrow,
I will massacre a prophet.

Jon Miller lives in the Scottish Highlands and has had poetry, literary articles and reviews published in a range of literary magazines. He is a winner of the Neil Gunn Poetry Competition, shortlisted for the Wigtown Poetry Prize, long-listed for the Bridport Poetry Prize and the National Poetry Competition. He was also winner of the The Poetry Business’ International Book & Pamphlet Competition. His latest pamphlet, Past Tense Future Imperfect (2023), is published by Smith/Doorstop.

Jon said this about these poems:

‘Why Does Time Fly Like An Arrow But Fruit Flies Like A Banana’ gives a persona or voice to a technology to which we increasingly turn for guidance in our everyday lives whether we know it or not. It is global, its dangers ubiquitous and its imminent self-awareness hints at a sense of dread and the manipulation of who we are.

‘Pontius Pilate’is an Easter poem – I find it a curious ritual to celebrate the killing of a man, a cruelty that continues in the attitudes of those currently in power in those biblical lands. And elsewhere.