On Different Frequencies

She reflects light in a frequency
That humans cannot see.
She knows she's only visible
To butterflies and bees.
Her ultraviolet radiance
Is fine for all the plants,
But you better wear your sunscreen
Or she'll burn you with a glance. 

She met a boy who's infrared,
Invisible like her.
Although she couldn't see him,
She could feel his warmth for sure.
And when they came together,
Both their frequencies combined.
The world could finally see them
And the photons that they shined. 

The world is full of so much light,
Though most we may not see.
Micro, gamma, radio,
The light in you and me -
The waves outside our vision
On the far ends of the spectrum,
We have to look in different ways,
Our eyes just can't detect 'em. 

Now let's combine our different light,
And make the future extra bright.

-B.C. Byron
When their light frequencies combined, they became visible to the world.
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Each color that you see, colors you can’t see but animals can, the stuff that cooks your food in the microwave, xray machines, body heat – all photons (light). There truly is so much light we can’t see in this universe and it has an effect on everything we do. The electromagnetic spectrum covers all the frequencies of those little photon particles from the slow radio waves, through the reds, blues, violet, and up to the dangerous radioactive gamma rays. It’s hard to believe that it’s all the same stuff just moving up and down at different rates. And wouldn’t it be amazing if we could see it all with our eyes? Imagine what the night sky would look like. Astronomers have taken pictures of the night sky from Earth with special telescopes that can see all of these frequencies of light and layered them onto the same photo. It’s pretty amazing to see how much our eyes are missing when we look up, but what’s even more amazing to me is the fact that there are so many colors we can’t see or even imagine. You see, the astronomers that take these special pictures have to change the frequency of the light so that our eyes can see it. They are really changing the color to something we’ve already seen before.

Many animals can see ultraviolet, infrared, and other frequencies that we can’t. They aren’t seeing them as red, blue, purple or any other color we can name. These animals are seeing colors we don’t have names for because our eyes don’t see them. Now I’m imagining a set of electronic eyes that we can invent sometime in the near future. These special eyes would hook right into our brain’s optic nerve and help us see as bees and butterflies do. Maybe we wouldn’t need a detecter to know if there’s a good wifi signal, because we could acually see it in the air with our bionic eyeballs! Neat idea, but I admit that I would NOT be the first in line to put such a device into my head, especially if it were to replace my trusty old human eyes. Let some other brave souls try it out for a year or so and find all the bugs before I implant a pair.

Light is amazing stuff and so are the differences between people. We don’t have to be loud or wear strange things to let our different light shine. Even if others can’t see that light, they can feel it. Using our talents for good and helping others to do the same. That’s how we combine our different frequencies.

Never Double Dip

I hope you know how low it is
to double dip a chip.
It's rude and crude for bitten food
to make a second trip.
In manners school they teach the rule
that double dipping isn't cool.
Don't be a punk and double dunk
a chip that touched a lip.
"Just think of others," Mother said.
That's why I TRIPLE dip.

-B.C. Byron
Make sure to use each corner, and dip quickly so the mouth germs don’t have time to migrate to that corner.
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I enjoy a good tray of layered bean dip at Christmas and New Year’s Eve parties. You know, the kind they have at the supermarket refrigerated section with refried beans, tomatoes, guacamole and green onions, all topped with shredded cheddar cheese. It’s the kind of dip that you load so heavy with each scoop that it often breaks the chip. You just can’t get enough on there at once. When eating the perfect chip dip, it also makes absulute sense to maximize the chip usage by going back in for another dip. Every square inch matters. It would be a terrible shame if they ran out of chips and there was still a pile if beany cheesy goodness left in the tray. Scooping it out the leftovers with a spoon just isn’t as tasty.

Well, not everyone understands this scenario as you can tell from the poem above. I’ve even tried turning the chip around to use the unbitten corners for each subsequent dip, ensuring that the germs are as far from the food contact edge as possible. THAT got complaints too. I even dipped extra fast so the bacteria wouldn’t have time to move across the chips between bites. Eveyone knows germs are slow (5 second rule proves this). There’s just no pleasing some people. Where are the people at the party complaining about all the dip-wasting germophobes, huh? Buying more chips isn’t a solution either. Can’t maximize your dip intake if the belly gets filled up with undipped chip corners.

I like how this short poem turned out because I was able to cram 2 or 3 rhymes into each line in some spots. It’s always a bonus to get intra-line rhymes and alliteration (repeated letter sounds) all in one go. Sometimes I go back through older poems and think about how I can rework them with more alliteration. If you spend the time, you’ll find there’s almost always a synonym or two that can be plopped in to improve the flow of a poem. Keep iterating until anyone can read your poem for the first time and automatically fall right into the rhythm. Be careful though. Too much alliteration can make a poem into an impossible tongue twister.