A Poem about (but not written by) AI
Thank you to Abby Poetree for allowing me to read my words on the subject of AI to the Platform audience last night. There’s quite a lot in it so I thought I would print it here. Questions in the Comments Section, please.
(By the way, I find ChatGPT a lot of fun, but I don’t believe it will ever replace poets for the reasons set out below.)
1) Volition
Out of the fog of darkness
Out of the wreckage of palaces and motorways
And flying saucers
Something explodes.
Blue fire crackles around the room
And the smell of sulphur fills the air.
I turn on the light and struggle to find
A scrap of paper and a biro
I have to capture these projected
Veils of thought
Vomitted up from the darkness
Before they melt into daylight.
Somewhere in San Francisco
An unidentifiable figure in T shirt and jeans
Writes the code that instructs
All the machines in the world to write
Paradise Lost in the style of the Marx Brothers
2) Meaning
They bloom every year. on the West Cliff
Trailing the same greenery over fence posts
And across the path.
Honeysuckle, blackberry
Even some out of place sweetpeas.
Mugwort, teasels, Morning primrose
I have seen them come and go
With the seasons
Green shoots to dried husks
Along with the strangers who have followed this path.
All the same. All different every year
The same bank of flowers
Are redolent with the sweet scented
Memories of those I have laughed with
And have passed this way.
Those with dreams of Australia
Or Abu Dabai, Manchester and Luton
And still they stay
Like old photographs curling at the edges
Sometimes they make me cry
Somewhere in San Francisco
An unidentifiable figure
In T shirt and Jeans
Trains his chatbot buddy to believe that a rose is red.
3) Code
Belch, fart, sneeze
My words are hiccups in the ether
They come to me in gouts of thought
That I have no time to process.
I have no time for precision
Grammar or rhyme
Or even reason sometimes
They stutter and falter along like the old man with a wonky knee that I am.
There is no book of instructions
No waymarked path
For the meanders I follow
No grammar or syntax
Unless it is mine.
In downtown Kenya
Lines of sweating people at desks
Wearing shirts with collars and ties
Are being marshalled to educate the code
From books of Ancient Usage
Stiff and regimented.
4) Signature
The words I sing to the wind
Are my children
My dearest friends
Who are with me
From breakfast to supper time
And deep into the night.
With these words I sign my name
Because they are who I am
what I have brought into existence can never be erased.
My words are me and I am in my words
In San Francisco our guy
In T shirt and Jeans
Drinks his cup of coffee absentmindedly
Builds a watermark into the code.
