Daddy-O Poem by naomi smith

My father believed that someday computers
would have equal rights with men.
'The poor dear computer' he would say,
'No one understands the computer! '
And all the while extolling the virtues
of the machine and the American Dream,
he did not see that jobs began to vanish!
and Daddy-O went on automating one factory
after another complaining how no one respected
computers! Yet how he railed at my mother
insisting that she needed a job because, after all,
she had been liberated! Vacum cleaners, washers
could do it all....he insisted! and meals magically
kept appearing on the table as if deposited there
by some genie out of a lamp or some computer?
'Soon no one will need to work anymore! '
Daddy-O would exclaim with joy. 'Computers
will do it all! '
So I asked him one day in a little tiny child's voice,
wondering if Daddy-O was okay?
'So Daddy-O what will we do if there are no jobs? '
'We will paint masterpieces, what do you think? '
So Daddy-O went on deleting jobs and incomes
for family men while railing at his wife to get a job!
Yet, I loved Daddy-O the way a child loves a father
and kept wishing he could be a shoemaker and that
we could live in a little cottage in a little hamlet.
Maybe, you should have married a computer,
Daddy-O!