ODE TO KING JIM
by A. Griffin

---

I don't like monarchies,
but I give praise to King Jim.
I wouldn't have a written voice like this without him,
his armory sent a weapon so I'd be equipped to begin.

It's a word processor, a language war knife,
the weapon I've wanted at my hip my entire life,
a linguistic key slipped to me behind the guard's back
so I can unlock my own cage,
and start the counterattack.

Are these really letter keys,
or are they surgical steel blades?
I can carve some sharp words into a digital page.
Not all hazardous weapons are unsheathed by a switch,
the Pomera DM100 is this autistic troublemaker's wish.

Button-cell battery backup is fresh,
twin Double A's for main power pass the test.

I wasn't one of those writers in claim only,
who thought I'd be the next Hemmingway
and write freely,
if only I had an fancy typewriter with no arrow keys,
so all my hipster buddies could look, and say,

"Wow! He's a writer, baby!",

or that I'd pull off a Pulitzer,
have high class pals,
and be the best,
if I only had fancy pens,
and a special desk:
but my fine motor limits
will be with me until death.

Some ask why a device
dedicated to writing
should dare to exist -

"Why not use a tablet,
instead of a pretentious gimmick?"

They call it pretentious,
but they're the ones turning up their nose.
But it's not their fault they don't know,
cause some limitations are concrete and diagnosed.

I wouldn't mind a notebook and pen,
honestly, I tried,
with attempt one after another,
making me wanna cry.

Being tethered to tech,
doesn't mesh with my druthers.
I wanted to prove
that the limits were in my head,
and write under the covers
without a laptop in bed.

But if it worked like that,
I wouldn't have spent grade school
doing Language Arts lessons on an Apple II.
So my pen's gotta be keyboard-formed, it's a fact.

I didn't see a writing-only device,
hunting for something "cool",
and want one as a statement,
to try hard
to seem original.

I've been after portable word processing on the go,
since mashing stories out on an organizer by Casio,
and by the turn of the millennium,
I moved on to Cybiko.

I wasn't looking for a statement piece
to be highfalutin and artistic,
I just have fine motor problems,
and am autistic.

The creative wheels turn in my head
at a thousand KPH,
but with my best effort,
my handwriting
looks like it's
from kid a tenth my age,
though give me a keyboard,
and in the same time,
I can fill a page.

My hand-eye motor pathways never fully advanced,
because I skipped the phase of moving,
with my legs and my hands.

Maybe my infant self was too impatient for crawling,
like Lieutenant Surge's Raichu evolving too early,
but going straight from the womb to walking
seemed impressive, so why worry?

Who knows why it happened,
but years later it raised suspicion -

"Why is this good student's writing
painful, slow, and deficient?"

And it wasn't lack of practice;
I tried calligraphy just for fun,
but in a school setting,
even with basic print,
I couldn't keep up.

They did weeks of testing
at university hospitals,
and narrowed down solutions
so success could be possible.

I needed access to typing,
like Henry needed special coal:
and machines for writng
stocked my special needs arsenal.

Word processing at school
started with an Apple II,
at home I had a little monochrome Mac SE,
then the school upgraded me to a Macintosh LC.
Later at home we got an IBM, and that was neat.
I could type out homework assigments
to please all of my teachers,
then blast away as Commander Keen
at nasty outer space creatures.

I went portable with writing
when I got my Cybiko,
but it was my 2001 iBook
that got me really bold.

In it's day it was among the smaller and tougher
laptops around,
and I could work at school,
without lugging a computer on a cart around -
but in an era when few teens even had cell phones,
having a laptop
made me stick out,
and sometimes it blowed.

Even with proof,
some teachers couldn't understand,
were sure I was doing something illicit
that they couldn't stand.

One said I used my Macintosh
for school computer sabotage;
was convinced Macs were programmed
to give PCs data loss.

Others were paranoid that I was goofing off in class,
but the quality of the work would prove,
I wasn't sitting on my ass.

If knew of Alphasmart keyboards,
I would have been into them:
a writing machine
common in disabled kid's toolkits,
and being writing-focused,
meant teachers could understand,
with no possible way games could derail the lesson plan.

Twenty years later,
DM100 is in my hands,
and a machine only for writing
fits perfectly in my plans.

"Why limit yourself?",
the online critics call,
but for me though,
it's not really limiting at all.

What's in my head is enough noise,
having no distractions is fun,
so it's the perfect weapon of choice
for this writer on the run.
Of course I tried an iPad with a cordless keyboard
but when I tried to write with it,
the full experience was poor.

I didn't understand why,
it was just a small laptop,
and I'd written novel-length manuscripts on laptops before,
but something was lacking
that laptops had aside from a keyboard.

The multitasking aspect of tablets
wasn't the culprit,
when writing time was on the clock,
it was simple to turn off the net.

With a tablet and keyboard,
the interface wasn't a dream,
because everything that wasn't typing,
still needed the touch screen.

Reaching up to touch all the time wasn't fabulous,
and the word processing interface
was so clunky it was scandalous.

The system is designed to assume
you don't have a keyboard,
so things that would be simple with a mouse
were cryptic, which I abhorred.

And transporting files off and on,
why make that easy?
"Just an excuse for piracy.",
said Apple,
they called it user treason.

I tried to make the experience work, but it was displeasing.
The operating system needed updates, and the reminders repeated,
and the custom battery was internal and not user-replaceable,
and planned obsolescence meant product life was unstable,
and what if the word processing app I loved,
stopped being supported?

I'd have to stop updating the device,
which would trigger constant warnings.
My DM100 needs no updates,
no features will come or go,
it will always be just as I know.

The double-A batteries that power it are universal,
I'll never live in fear of the maker
pulling support.

I can transport writing quickly with an SD Card,
so moving files on and off computers
isn't even hard.

The Pomera is lighter and thinner
than any tablet that I know,
and when you add a keyboard,
the weight comparison is overboard.

For those reasons alone,
for me, the Pomera's price is paid,
and I'd be ready to go,
but they're other points still to be made,
that I can show.

Smartphones and tablets are corporation-created
to blast the user
with content corporations curated.
I'm not here for existing stuff,
I want to make something new,
which can be tough,
because many are hard-wired
to consume
and not to create,
so a device made for making things,
makes them not know
what to think.

I don't want un-earned attention,
or a special reward,
I just want to make something
no one's thought of before.
That's why when it's time for me to bang out a page,
I want the nonsense and distractions clear and out the way.

Social media and YouTube are a digital cage,
a blank canvas doesn't shove tired memes in a painter's face,
no begging you to do updates,
or to click now to get delivered curry,
no fake news about public schools being invaded by furries,
no reminders to buy replica watches in a limited special,
and to repeat myself:
planned obsolescence ain't acceptable.

Guitars and harps don't stop musicians,
to tell them which movies they're missing,
so why as a writer
is wanting writing-only tools pretentious?

Screens can be windows,
or things that block windows,
what an odd word,
no wonder the call of the outside world
often goes unheard.

Birdsong is my soundtrack,
so I don't need or use Spotify,
thanks to lacking WiFi,
my DM100 is permanently offline,
no connection bars to mind,
or escalating subscription fees
to put a price on my time,
no Terms of Service contract
to put my rhymes in a bind,
everything that appears
on the Pomera's screen
is forever mine.

I don't need to see my face in any book that I didn't write.
No empty debates with faceless adversaries over who's right,
the only enemies to face on this machine are blank pages.
The DM100 has no games,
but every session is fun,
adding word count
like a sprinter on an endorphin run.

My gaming time's gone down,
because I used to carry my Switch,
but with the DM100 I can write whenever I wish,
and I'd rather write than play games most of the time,
so I decorate my Pomera so there no doubt that it's mine.

Custom stickers from online creators
fit the lid like a glove.
Felix grins like a cat fiend
and Lord Frith smiles from above
when I'm typing away on my word processor doing what I love.
Red-eyed shadow fox peeks from down below,
as the Black Rabbit of Death reminds me
my time is forever running lower -
so I remain on task, and keep doing my thing,
in the presence of an autistic pride worm-on-a-string.

And that was my tribute
to Jim, the Great King,
may his glorious machines forever
let creative freedom ring.

---

This one's dedicated to the imported Japanese word processor I discovered in March 2022 that without exaggeration has changed my life.

I talk about in detail over on my blog HERE ON MY BLOG, which is host to many opinion pieces and blog posts that wouldn't necessarily fit well here on FA.

Thanks to Polymori for drawing me as a dorky bird monster.

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