The Febuary Editor's Pick Poet is Norbert Hirschhorn

Please feel free to email Norbert at bertzpoet@yahoo.com

THE MAN IN THE ‘CHINESE ROOM’

(A fantasy based on the thought experiment by philosopher John Searle to show that just because a computer can be programmed to converse in Chinese doesn’t mean it has consciousness.)

Brutal, exhausted by breakfast,

locked up in this windowless room by a
neuropsycholinguist

who’s left me a box of characters
—gold embossed on blocks of wood—

and a monitor whose screen each morning
reveals questions written in Chinese.

I don’t know Chinese, but I must answer, correctly,
using this codebook with pictures of the characters.

I give them names, so they become
my friends, otherwise I’d go mad.

Here’s one that looks like a man
sitting on a turnstile. 

(Good morning, Stile Sitter.)
Perhaps I am mad.

I’ve lost track of time. I feel…
like winter darkness in the woods—

you think you can see,
but you stumble into cellar holes.

The monitor beeps—asks, “What are you thinking,
What are you thinking?”

My thoughts. My thoughts.
I have to bear down, focus, force words out,

like a monkey throwing shit from its cage:
sycamore, thistle, rhubarb, tinsel.

I’m thinking every person deserves to be held.

I ignored the monitor once.
I wasn’t fed for three days.

A piece of me escapes in dreams each night
revealing what life is like, outside.

I remember—a long time ago—springtime
in the gardens of Kew—   

an old man, impossibly bent,
who looked up at me, and whispered,
“It’s a miracle. It’s a miracle.”

Whatever comes after this, it’s not this.

SILENT

as in the scream, the spring, the sound of
hello darkness my old friend,
as in the holy night, as music is
what tolls between the notes, as language is
what throbs around the words, the way
a gangster fits his gun, the way
her slip hits the floor, the way the stars quiver

IF THE…THEN THE

If the fascist café is a truck with a punctured tire on the M4,
then a Pacifist Airline flight coming in to Heathrow runs out of fuel.

If the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew are below the falling flight,
then the crocus carpet shrivels up like an old man’s face.

If an old man on the pavement is deaf and distracted,
then a truck with failing brakes smashes through the fascist café.

Norbert Hirschhorn is a public health physician, commended by President Bill Clinton as an “American Health Hero.” He lives in London and Beirut.  He has published four collections. His poems have appeared in numerous US/UK publications, several as prize-winning.

See more about him HERE