Karen Bookguilder is intended to be a collection of poems 60 poems expressly for the Book Guild
by Mike Burr - the themes being dictated by or about its published artisans .
Transistors
transistors with their little legs are gone
marched off by the progression of the world
to landfill or a cauldron
and fused into a little cube their children's children play
and sing happy binary songs among the silver fins
of heat sinks
the odd capacitor spends its spindly wire leg lifetime
standing rigid as a frightened kid in the juniors Xmas play
while cubed transformers like teachers
square upon the board are overseeing all and humming
to themselves an inner laminated tune
such electric boards have small and distant secrets
built by foreign intrigue
so that one can no longer mend the bastards
when they inevitably fail just out of warranty
children with their little legs are gone
marching off into that progression world
and when they fail just out of warranty
one wonders whether it is the precision of the structure
and thus the constraint imposed by its strictures
or conversely
a lack of discipline
that caused their weeny breakdown
or is our meter faulty
in its digital conception
a transformer can never transform perfectly
it losses and emits radiation of a colour peculiar to itself
affecting the things around it with its perceptions
wisdom, morality
limited by its inefficient transmission
of these concepts
the limits of electric pathways
the world is full of tests and probes and comparitors
but usually this usurps the place of understanding