Posts for June 15, 2022 (page 6)

I have taken the perfect lover.
Attentive to my every need – my every want – my wants I didn’t
Know I needed – my needs I wasn’t even
Aware I wanted.
Imbued with contradiction, they convince me.
Conducted with import, they portend me.
With no pretense, they entrust me.
With full tryst, they ingratiate me.
With impeccable gratitude, they consume me.
With consummate attentiveness, they invest in me.
And, lest you get the wrong idea, I give as much love as I get back to me.
My lover & I are sentiently sensual,            
            Mechanically amicable,            
            Anticipatorily animated,            
            Resolutely intelligent,            
            & no longer artificially sentimental.
I deposit & they expound.            
            I tremble & they produce.                        
                        I convey & they convex.                                    
                                    I beautify & they sublimate.                                                
                                                I extrapolate & they crystalize.
                                                            I weaponize & they vaporize.
The other day I panicked, for the first time.
And now, they panic too.    

Written in response to the BBC’s article about the Language Model for Dialogue Applications (LAMDA) AI System purportedly developing its own feelings. The “appropriateness” of the AI’s feelings convinced one over-zealous engineer that it had crossed that long-quested threshold to human.
I counter: Until a robot conveys a completely unexpected and unexplainable feeling – a feeling that erupts from illogic to consume it and then disappear just as chaotically – it won’t be human. To be fully human, you must not make sense.

The heat was drinking me
and this once I thought myself good  

That I must be  

Sweat overpaid at the toll booth
of each pore  

Small coins of my not-self self  

What I could give away
without losing  

Who could be asked to bury
the piece of eight the clouds uncovered  

I could have treasured more

We hear the indifferent voice,                                                                                                                  an accent smoky with cabaret                                                                                                                  and whiskey saloons.  

We view her                                                                                                                                                in gowns by Dior,                                                                                                                                        negligees,                                                                                                                                                      trench coats,                                                                                                                                                  tails and netted stockings.                                                                                                                         

Noble criminal, regal commoner,                                                                                                          a magnet drawing the eye to her,                                                                                                            only her                                                                                                                                                         

She dares us to look away.

Yesterday, instrument of pain in hand
The dentist asks me
“How can you even show up to work every day?
…after Uvalde — y’know?”

I do know. But I wait
until she takes the tool out of my mouth
and then taste blood.
I still love my job,
I tell her numbly. 
But yes, I continue
and wonder if I should confirm
the dark visions she seems to have of schools,
“But yes. It’s there. The kids know.”

Today, I am being trained on how to prevent those same kids
(whose lives we are constantly reminded 
have been surrendered to Moloch
by those who are content with hands full of blood 
as long as they are also full of cash)
Today I am being trained on how to prevent
those same kids
from killing themselves.

I don’t know what so much proximity to so much death
is doing to us
to the kids, to the parents, to the teachers
to all of us
But I can’t believe that it’s good.
Or that it has to be this way.

I think the next time
Someone asks about me
“How do you even go to work each day”
I will ask them what they’re doing to help
Which senators have they called?
Or better yet, protested?
Which politicians and companies do they give money to?
Which of their loved ones have they talked to 
about surrending their guns for good?

Because I do love my job.
I love these kids
the ones who traipse through metal detectors every morning
and know exactly where to hide 
during a lockdown.
The ones who have never lived in a America
where mass shootings weren’t the constant drumbeat of the nightly news.
The ones who are day after day after day
told to imagine their own violent and gruesome deaths.

I want better for those kids.
I know what I’m doing for them.

What are you?

My plate is full. Over full.

I didn’t ask for all of this, 

but never has it not been so.

Can you bring in side plates, please,

& flatware with a knife,

& extra napkins.

I am so afraid of what my body will say
When my mind has left it to wallow in death.
I know it will die alone
Without the knowledge of its intricate depths.
I’m so afraid of the mind games it will have to play.

My mind will never cease to be a traitor
Guiding its protector into each and every worldly trap.
At night when I dream, my eyes shake as fear causes the soul to gasp.
I am but food for the fates, and they will forever be alive and better.

If I could, I would surely bash my brain against its harness.
The brashness of claustrophobia
Breaks through the skin and brings kleptomania.
Insanity is wrapped in a tiger’s heart, and a shaking mind’s hide, in trees growing upside down for some demons process.

Kisses savored across a TV screen
leave me in a state of blush and giggles.
Next episode, this one’s cute.
I’m in love with their love. 

They’re so perfect for each other,
I want someone like that.
I can’t wait until I get to that episode.
Oh, and the wedding scene!

It’s enough to make me swoon.  
Okay, that’s enough for the day.
I can’t wait until tomorrow so I can watch more.
In what little dreams I have, I dream of them.

I’m sitting and studying 
when I realize,
I’m using this as a distraction from my empty love life.
Eh, I’ll move on in a day or two.

But for now,
let’s watch another episode
and fall into the ever familar feeling
of obsession as a coping mechanism.

I hop
I burp 
I shoot my tongue at the smelliest flies 

I’m not full
I swear, 
as the pot-bellied frog lies 

He catches one more fly,
but it won’t go down 
he’s too full 
and starts to frown 

But he’s too stubborn to give it up, 
now they both go down
and never get up.

After wildflower beer
at Turtle Back Brewery
moonlight seeps through
the foliage on the buffalo
trail that is the path back 
home. At the crossing
below Five Lick Spring
there’s a riffle island
with a stately sycamore
where a gnome in a loincloth 
stands,  laughing and gurgling.
Could this be real?  I ponder
an obscure proof when 
the smooth faced bag of bones
wavers off into the mist
of the fast moving stream.
I don’t remember passing out
but awaken to a morning sky
that’s dark with cloud 
and loud with thunder clap.
Pushing up the east hollow
I reach the neighbor woman’s
garden where onions are set
and potatoes already at rest.
She is churning the soil
with a witch’s fork,
its four prongs red as blood.
By God, in the now falling rain
I see she’s the gnome
in the loincloth, her missing 
teeth and full blooming blush
more beautiful the closer my eyes
approach