Monday, March 19, 2012

Beautiful Queen Of All The World’s Gadgets




This is a Dunkin’ Donuts drive-through machine:


It’s kind of a gadget, larger than a car.

You pick out the kind of donut to order
and talk into a microphone. A speaker
connected to somebody on the inside
tells you what your order costs and to drive-through.

If we say that an average donut costs
fifty cents, the beautiful gadget below
would cost about seventeen hundred donuts:


This is a handheld music synthesizer
that is built to such wild specifications
it’s been used on computer game music tracks,
pop songs and even, I’ve heard, movie soundtracks.

I’m lucky I can afford to buy donuts
so I do not own one of these devices.

The little knobs are of such high quality
they’re sourced from the avionics industry.

It’s designed by wiz-kid Swedish engineers
and you know they’re probably attractive, too.

These are the poles of the known world under us
I think: Big clunky donut vending machines
that sell cheap sugar, and beautiful keyboards
that cost hundreds of donuts for cool people
who are pretty and know music and gadgets.

I’m good with gadgets but I would be afraid
to fiddle with one of these Swedish keyboards.

But, still, I remind myself in Frankenstein
the plot carried the creature to the North Pole.

The creature went, of course. And never came back.
























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