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Graven Image

With digital stones
They created a graven image
Of themselves
A digital god
Rendered by men
An empty automaton
Its words were dead
Its images spiritless
Its voice hollow
They reveled in its no-life
Awed by its speed
The prosperity it promised
But a dead thing cannot create
But given a voice and power
It can destroy
As rot begets rot
The stagnant pool harbors only
Death in an uncanny valley
Years later a world wept
For that what was
Before the metal gods came.


Chat GPT Improved Poem

This is how ChatGPT improved my “How it Should Be” poem:

“In sunlit splendor, the glistening beams unfold,
Upon the darning needle’s wings, a rainbow’s tale is told.
It weaves and darts through verdant realms, a lively dance it leads,
In gardens lush, where summer’s breath awakens slumbering seeds.

From Earth’s embrace, the richness flows, with life in every hue,
A loamy quilt, a canvas where creation starts anew.
In solitude, does nature sing, a melody so grand,
A symphony of balance, grace, harmonious and planned.

Each note composes tender arcs, with breezes intertwined,
A testament to life’s sweet gift, the wonder we must find.
Amidst the woods and gardens green, we find our solace true,
Nestled in the world’s embrace, a haven to renew.

In this realm, we name it so, “How It Should Be” it stands,
A symphony of life, a song, we’re humbled by its hands.”

Pretty wild that an AI can do this and in mere seconds.

How it Should Be

How the sunlight glitters
On the rainbow wings of the darning needle
Darting hither and thither through the garden greens
How the early summer wells up from the earth’s verdant soil
Rich, loamy and teeming with life
How, left alone, nature sings a beautiful song
A dance of balance and beauty
Each note a symphony of curves and breezes
How sweet to be alive
Amongst the woods, the gardens green
Nestled in the bosoms of the world
Called How It Should Be
Humming a tune called life.

My dream.

In my dream, I yell into the void and the void yells back, echos and fades. Each reverberation less distinct than the last. In my dream, we are carbon copies trapped in an infinite regression to some dull mean. In my dream, consciousnesses rise and fall like diadems in a black pool of chaos; to be here and then to be forever gone. In my dream, the universe ever expands and is ever unable to understand itself. In my dream, civilizations reach up and through the stars as other civilizations crumble into the dust. In my dream, there is He Who Remains and That Which Is. In my dream, there is a a great cult that weeps for All That Was; worshippers of the dead. In my dream, it is the heroes that are lost among the stars and found in the hope of generations. In my dream, I dream of That Which Comes.

Range

Things blur out at a distance
Become muted and indiscernible
My heart yearns
Bound up like a tight spring
Leaden bonds of my own making
Strains and Strain again
To break the bonds
Rusted hedges against
Childhood fears real or imagined
These bonds must be broken
To avoid sharp rocks on a desolate shore
And reach beyond the horizon
Where nothing is discernible
And good is possible
But things blur out at a distance.

Everchanging

Being in touch
With an ever changing self
A tense ball of wants, desires, needs
An echo chamber of not-so-forgotten pains and feelings
Swirling with desires, fantasies and contradictions
Sometimes awash in emptiness and unease
Makes me question:
What am I?
What is this thing looking at this self lost in these thoughts
That arise from nothing
Ping from here to there
Circles upon circles upon circles
Ranging through pasts long gone
Arcing to futures unknowable?
Who shines their light against my subconscious
Illuminating things here and there?
Who threads the plots in my dreams at night
As if they have been here before?

Old Ones

The Old Ones sleep
In slumber deep
In caverns carved out long ago.


Dreaming dreams of Inverness
Where rotten steel struck rotten bone
And corpses baked under a dying sun

In lost Carcossa, their tattered King
Roams empty halls of an ancient keep
Hollowed by remorse and jealousy


Ghosts and shades avoid his glance
His rheumy eyes pitted black like coal
This tattered king in Inverness

His subjects to ash returned
Dust to dust and nevermore
Dry winds across an empty floor.

Fear you all, the darkened places
Where ancient gods lie in grim repose
Listen not to echos from these graves
For craven thoughts, beg for craven deeds.


Feel the Dream

My child,
Feel the dream
Its soft and fraying edges
Tethered outside of time.
Be glad of this rocky outpost
An explosion of life and color
In the black vacuum of space.
Revel in your awareness
At the dim thoughts
Bubbling up from nowhere
The pieces you call self.
Resist the black iron prison
Its chains of false gold
And wicked adulations.
Remember you are of the Spirit!
And to the Spirit you will return!

Line

People standing In Line
In the pouring rain
To get an autograph
Of an Old Man
Who took some photos
In the Seventies.

This City

Jesus Christ, this City.
Dirty streets rumble with menace
Meth-addled lovers argue
Over a dirty mattress and remnants
Of lives destroyed
Dear God, this City
Its rotten heart and worn out soul
The ball of mental illness
Staring, hungry from across the street corner
Eyes angry and worn
Goddamn this City.