The Opening

A person rarely generates
New patterns. Creative persons,
Persons fawned over as models

Of whatever prized behaviors,
Make preexisting patterns more
Likely to happen. Geniuses

Distort judgement, theirs and others,
And that adds new wrinkles to things,
Seems to alter reality,

But patterns are only amped up
Or tamped down. Greater risk-taking,
Often, more impulsivity,

But if a person seems the source
Of some grand creativity
Or invention, you can be sure

It is, at most, an inflection
Within the preexisting range
Of things people have always done.

Cumulative, groupish changes,
However, machines, however,
Those yield more open-ended dreams.

Oh yes, they may be nightmarish,
You bet, not a bit poetic,
But the only way you’re getting

To see something really different
In the old human way of things
Will be if it comes from the things.