Faulty Towers

The parents of this day desire sons and daughters like their ancestors did--
heartfelt their siring instinct, driven are they to spread their seed.
Times change, but basic human wants do not. Yet the devil
is in the details, as the saying goes, and therefore the
raising of children is now assigned to androids,
for though the parenting instinct still abides,
technological advancement remains,
and each child having his or her own
nurturing android is seized upon
by the parents of today
with alacrity.

Mom and Dad with cells
in hand run to and fro with
text to send, busy with career
and country club and all the other
social interactions necessary for the day.
Once nurturing survived to supplement offspring,
clear water from a wellspring of human virtuousness,
lost somewhere back when, now entrusted to so many androids.

There appears a pacifier for Bobby all right, an android grows
another thumb or rocks Alicia to the hum of circuit boards.
Cute Camilla coos beneath the colorless eyes of Mama Data,
bonding fervently with towers of tin without a heart.

Raising is without a flaw, no booger goes un-wiped.
Sterility is the nation, the tie is microwave.
Those fluids coursing forty-weight,
pulses replaced by clicks, and
every child, black or white,
lives life within a vault.

29 Lines
Writer’s Cramp
May 12, 2013