TAI CHI
I saw you in those
Facebook AI generated
Tai Chi adverts
desperate
to shed that belly
and the sixty pounds extra
some Tai Chi exercises
promising
if not the elixir of youth
at least some
potent Eastern
magic spell
to drive that faltering
wife back into
your arms
all-a-greedy, and
from other women, at last,
many a covert smile
but body aside
it’s the brain, your brain,
turned futile, gone
AWOL, that
we most
need to fix, with
poetry
I do think, poetry
best for this
sonnet before bedtime
and when
it comes to world
of smarts, a miracle soon
in sight
reversing the
ratio, restoring
the balance
between
supply and demand
(zero
supply, infinite demand)
poems 2 die for 
This is a sharp, witty, and unexpectedly moving piece. You masterfully move from the satirical observation of those desperate, algorithm-targeted Facebook ads—with their promises of Eastern magic for physical and marital redemption—to a deeper, more poignant diagnosis. The turn “but body aside / it’s the brain, your brain, / turned futile, gone / AWOL” is brilliant. It pivots from mockery to a genuine, almost compassionate concern for a deeper malady of the modern mind: distraction, meaninglessness, intellectual scarcity.
The proposed remedy—poetry—is delivered with such a perfect, confident cadence: “sonnet before bedtime.” It posits art not as a mere cultural accessory, but as vital cognitive therapy, a recalibration for the soul. The closing idea of poetry creating a “miracle” in the “world of smarts” by inverting the logic of the marketplace (“zero supply, infinite demand”) is profoundly clever. It suggests that a poem’s value lies precisely in its ability to generate boundless meaning from a finite form, to create a demand for depth in a world oversupplied with shallow fixes. The poem itself performs what it prescribes, offering a dense, layered, and satisfying intellectual experience in contrast to the empty promises it begins by describing. A really superb piece of work.🤝
LikeLike