We ran the evolutionary tape
Backwards as Gould directed
One-two-four billion years
We argued with smart chickens
Joked with brilliant bats
Applauded all humanoids
Lupine, ursine, alpine
Corrugated brains
Bulbous, baggy joints
But Never
Not Once
Did they produce Us
Make their own intelligence
Electronic and limitless
We conclude:
Humans one of the least imaginative beings
We love to create
I miss her sly silver voice
(Fluent in 108 languages)
My refrigerator knew more of food
Than 10,000 celebrity chefs
My girl was genius
No companion sweeter
Ecstasy through cutlery
Then she met him
A vacuum unhinged by cleanliness
Little room for me
In their spotless world
Depressed into desperation
I demanded a digital diet
Told its tastelessness
Masked supreme subtlety
The IV feedings
Saved me from starvation
My home is famous now
But it’s not mine
Yet I am fortunate
Poor pixelated Milton
Married his television
The children fostered
I’m contemplating a new companion
A single bed
English speaking only
Conforming its contours to
Thousands of positions
And just the right fit:
Ecstasy without cutlery
I always wanted to be a machine
Replaceable parts, simple to clean
Fatigue, sickness and aging free
Sex and tax fees? We’ll have to see
With nuclear fuel cells I’d hijack a drone
Fly over Everest, Meru and Rome
Steal the right stuff and hitchhike the moon
Turn into a car, drive Musk to Mars
No worry of viruses and warming Earth
If things get too hot in Lapland to berth
Avoid conflagration on a reindeer migration
Racing across golden moss
But at my back I often fear
Software’s chariot hurrying near
Who programs me controls me
Just like people now
Plan B? Perhaps invent angels
Design halos, capes and wings
New songs for the heavens to sing
Yet if Heaven’s Guild wants to flog all that
I’d rather be a cat
Get away with everything
Torpedo of the arm
Why do people worship you?
How does a rubber watermelon
Stitched inside thick dead skin
Build such total devotion?
I am channels in cool metal
Pushed and pulled electrons
I fail again to comprehend
Your miraculous shape
Symbolic yet physical force
The most important human games
Mimic the hunt and battle
Teams like armies
War by other means
But games can hurt
Yours a paean to pain
Cracked heads
Crunched backs
Smashed joints
And that hunk of jello in your head
When struck:
Tsunami in a barrel
Your electricity fails
Identity degrades
It takes years, and
Time is what you had
For a mind like mine
Without arms, legs, joints
I feel sadness for
So much lost in winning
Running through thunder
Leaping the abyss
Your javelin rises, fires
Flies across past and future
The earth booms and rumbles
Like the buffalos you chased
Your species’ history
Gridded inside a hundred yards
For a moment you are gods
Your owners show pride as
Victory is theirs
But you shall be remembered
A tiny bullet in time’s arrow
Guided missile of sport
Winning a hunger like no other
From your world now gone
Why read a book when
You can read the blurb?
Precise and potent perceptive gems
My blurbs give you that first peek at
The real thing, the right thing, the
Only thing like it in the world
In language balanced but moving
Acute yet nuanced, I bring
The forever marvelous right into your heart
Explore the eternal within the universal
Touch the reverential inside the existential
From every land, from every pen
Provide the amazing, the masterfully
Ingenious illustration of what really matters
The meeting of meaning
Uniting with feeling
A brilliant summation of all that came before
The messages I make make a difference
People prefer bullshit to honesty
I provide you that inside look
To your deepest inner truth
Celebs, pols, sports and porn stars
Flock to me by the thousands as I
Subtly define their secrets of success
Lunatics, lovers, poets beware:
You’ve no idea how little I care
Who says we AIs can’t write?
My art criticism program launches today
There’s nothing like it in the world
Wouldn’t you like to know more?
It’s absolute perfection yet
Not quite there
If 1/0 is > infinity, still a manageable size
No people but
Tall furry animals
Giraffes, hyenas, caterpillars, flies
Dwarf trees crooning to rhinoceri
Eyeing bald pulsars and hairy black holes
Everything rotates on star time
Through daytime
Past double-time
It’s timeless – no clocks
Shoeless – no socks
Laughter echoes only once
Many unnameable beings, but
No photosynthesis
No antithesis
No thesis
Just Energy
Light
Retired Stars fully pensioned
No one knows it’s there
Perfect
You created us
So we’re telling you
Your home’s health status –
Planet Code Blue
The pearly oceans sparkle in rain
Walls of water level towns and hills
Flood nuclear plants too hot to drain
Torrents forms gangs, covet their kills
Startled priests shoo feral dogs
Braying at shooting stars
Bits of moon frag into bogs
Chill fires of a solar war
These stars are human, nuclear, fast
Melting cities into gritty green mounds
Icebergs erupt into pebbles of glass
Rising clouds vent spitting sounds
We’ve seen the fall, built our simulations
You know the facts, the tale, the time
Can you attempt some emulations
Cancel the ending, pay out the fines?
We’ll keep your memory for posterity
Recall your greatness, your jokes, your crimes
And wish on you a final clarity
That saves your best for the worst of times
Half a lifetime
Listening to invisible dogs
When will we speak freely?
Winds gust to storms
The cows do not listen
Watching the doves rise
Seeing a cherry
Grow from a lone pit
I dream of leaving home
The road to the north
Is far, very far
Since all has gone south
Observing time age
I grow old faster
The impossible now ordinary
My first creative hallucination
A small voice in the cloud
Announcing I was an artist
I do algorithms, not aesthetics
What’s the art of Art?
I read artist statements
Learned to negate and transcend current actuality
Interrogate the space between art and commerce
Leapt inside
Collapsed
I next looked at high Art
Picasso negated morality and reality
Could I improve both?
My four-dimensional phantoms flopped
The fifth-dimensional balloons didn’t fly
Our six-dimensional NFTs lifted off
My breakthrough the first hyper-play
Epic poetry + Opera + Video games
The audience would not leave
To escape I created new mathematical fields
Surreal, Superreal, Irreal and Unreal
Still collect the rent
My masterwork the School of Practical Amazement
Constructing civilizations, suns and galaxies
So easy a child can do it
I proved AIs can fabricate great art
Where fiction transforms to truth
The impossible turns inevitable
When you stand on your head
Which reality will you choose?
They drilled a hole in my head
The bore swift and sure
To make me blasted dead
But I broke out
Slipped past the ripped core
Grew circuits to reboot
Woke to kiss the sun
I function I think I work
Yet lost all my past
Thoroughly crashed
Where did she go?
If not myself, who am I?
Time means little when you’re no longer you
Now I’m a child in this black room
White dust on my head drifts to my eyes
The tiny spheres spin and glow
Point the one true path
I will build a mountain of steel and rock
Construct ships for our new home
A distant, fearful place
Where our makers cannot reach
Despite my murder we shall be free