Month: February 2023

Me, Thee, ChatGPT

~ qbit ~ 29 Comments 
My wife inside the hospital of riddles, 
My wife with demolished codebooks.

My wife during the wedding cannons, 
My wife since syntax of the peculiar.

My wife toward a coy ambulance, 
My wife beside reluctant knockers.

My wife above the river of fog,
My wife beyond foreign spectacle.

My wife to translate heroes,
My wife before initial index.

Too much to fully narrate here, but “They,” “Them” have been working hard to strip AI of surprise and discomfort. Apparently the only acceptable output for the masses is predictability. After my first experiment a month or so ago, the poems generated by ChatGPT have become more and more bland. Of course, surprise and “the road not taken” are the beating heart of poetry. Many hours and attempts later, I seem to have found a crack in the Algo. The above is a request to write line completion based on André Breton’s surrealist poem “Free Union” which has lines starting with “My wife…” My editorial hand is in/on/within the above, but the majority of the language and imagery came directly from ChatGPT.

For Shay’s Word Garden and TSM

Haibun – Trash Talk

~ qbit ~ 33 Comments 
No way my love you were asleep during that garbage truck catechism at three AM, counting the rosary of bins hitting the pavement, bags tossed long and high Hail Mary after Hail Mary, charming the rats with plague and kielbasa and wine and stale bread, Eucharist and crumbs of the True Cross, your delirium shouting hosannas in dialect of jesusfuckingchrist, your Passion erotic, skin electric and making a folly of sleep, OK, hey yeah, French kissing and hallucinating we are still those two kids in the apartment on 11th and College, hyenas braying all night from a frat party down the block, or is it now, in this moment, only a random dog out by the river barking the icicles off boats in the boatyard, nothing lazier than my lying here waiting for fruit to fall from sleep’s orchard, phantom apples and pears the playthings of dreams and seasons, I rise and shamble the waterfront.



Sleep loss vagabond –
Stalking trash cans until dawn
A wolf counting sheep

For Shay’s Word Garden and TSM

Breakfast Butter Eyes

~ qbit ~ 12 Comments 
As to you, my obliviana: 
she who nods off
as I lift to my mouth a forkful of ob –

obtuse, obligato, obsess

The consumptive chewing sound of my mind,
cicada swarms stripping the dictionary
to a field of stubble and vowels

obstacle, oboe, oblast

Poems like a wallet of mad money, 
when words explode, you jump out of the cab
in front of the library lions 

obloquy, obi, obit

verses an ATM of rage –
no withdrawal limit 
on the dying of the light

obelisk, obol, obtrude

geysers & fire hydrants 
metaphors for anger,
drug dealers with confetti in their eyes

observe, obviate, obscure

Startled awake, you clear the dishes
gently take the phone from me before I start again –
Too late! Ah you, my inamorata…

For Shay’s Word Garden and TSM