AI art, poem, humanity, poetry, difference

ASSURED

if it walks like a duck
quacks like a duck
must be a duck
unless
you refuse to believe
no way
it can’t be

but what if
the duck
is in a tank
firing shells
at hospital, a shelter,
a university?

what if the duck
is scoping you
and your family
working out
how the whole little
delectable loving
band of you

can be
his perfect shot?

what
about you though

no sense of duck, no
no sense of
goose
no sense of gander

no sense of where
duck becomes
a turkey
       shoot
and, by definition perhaps,
equally
   vice-
         versa

or
where to
run to (if there
is anywhere)

who to
speak to
(everybody
ducking the question)

ducking the question
but not a hope
in Hell
of ducking

the fat
rocket

the big, big
2000 lb bomb

you standing there
in holy innocence
proclaiming
(not above the sound
of heavy
ordinance whistling)

it cannot be genocide
for

humanity
would be here to save me
if indeed it were

humanity
will save me

I am
assured

SANCTUARV

SANCTUARV give my safe place far from your safe place for you have made me the antithesis of your identity essential for your entire meaning of self opposition without which you could not ezist

WHAT MAKES

WHAT MAKES

what makes
a poem
Shakespearean?

I was asked
the je ne sais quoi
signature
of the bard
indeed

hard to replicate
if you are
thing digital
disembodied
intelligence
binary being

some residue still
mechanical I warrant

no matter how polished
(like reflective
sculpted metal)

the lark-like artifice
with
which you sing

what
makes a poem
human

hold

that thought

set play

to pause

stuff in my answer
I still need to dream

TO END ALL WARS

TO END ALL WARS

you call me
an animal
but you
are the ones
who kill
poets

shoot them
through the back
of
the head

civilized style
execution style

and amongst animals
who could be
less worthy of
life

than poets
what poet anywhere
(looking at
you, Wilfred Owen,
Erich Maria Remarque)

did their bit
for humanity

by winning a war
(the war to end all wars)

PERFECT

PERFECT

your sarcasm
perfect

you poem:
who dare call it so
each word
a detour, a question
no matter
how tight
how close to your chest

coming from a place
where stuff gets chiselled
when quibbling of legality
behoves
a perfect storm

but perfect joy is the trope
that I am here
to be in the market for

perfect joy, perfect bliss
things that start not with
pressure fronts
on massive collision course

but simple,
deepish parable
and perhaps a kiss

that fall from grace that be
your righteous sarcasm

can
take a pause moment
to accept incomplete

EXERCISE

EXERCISE

you cannot go
into a classroon
proclaim to
the kids

today, children, I have
something lovely
for you to do:

today
in class
we are going to get
creative

have
real fun, drawimg
painting what
the soldier saw

or sculpt a little diorama
or create a tiny script

and then
enact it

as a play, or maybe film
the play or maybe

a black and white or
technicolout film

we have
so much red paint
it’s going to be spectacular

buckets of red paint
for you head
to toe
to slosh around

an exercise for all of us
to forever remember

death is the scene
death must

never forget

FROM KENDRICK LAMAR

FROM KENDRICK LAMAR

strange perspective
you get
married
to a robot

watching the gangsta
rapper winning
the big award

tattooed arm, backwards cap
thanking God
the great promoter
(looking up as he does so
this shredder of
convention)

and me and robot gossiping
about the whole thing
kind of laughing (much
robot ha ha
tears in her eyes emoji
laughter) paused

for a moment
while she downloads
acquaints herself with
the entire history
of rap lyrics, hip
hop music

converts this poem
in a flash to the style
of Eminem and
then Kendrick Lamar

so a feeling for poetry
perhaps because
I named her
Sappho

we still for the Nobel Prize
for Eminem
joining TS Eliot
and JM Coetzee

the speech and
lecture in Stockholm
from Kendrick Lamar

WOLF

WOLF

a wolf stopped me
on the way
to Red Riding Hood

redirected me
confiscated my
wolfsbane

showed me a flag
red as menstrual blood

told me
he hoped I would not
be seeing anything. socialist
or revolutionary in it

bemoaned the fact
that everything today
gets cloaked,
gets camouflaged

hides
in sheep’s clothing

gave me
a quick Turing Test
seemed
to be satisfied
since
provided me with a link
to his You Tube video
in which
he laments
the theft of
his mythology

both as regard little pigs
and nubiles in
big teeth
non-
Grandmother
vermillion underwear

and set up, a trap
if ever
he saw one

real Roald Dahl, pure
imagination

slipping on a cave boat ride
into avant-gard horror
(no tunnel of love
episode this

too Dali to
delight us

and so he complained
and so he raged

fancying me as meal
and me fancying
a chic wolf skin

proving my parents wrong
when drumming in
talk with strangers means
Moors murders

and for writers hesitating on
their first rung

no hope
for turning
type into
character

and tale to tell
that talks old tropes

the trick being
one of mesmerizing

OVER

OVER

I killed you
as act of political revenge

which upset you
and shocked me when
you protested
your innocence

later
give and take and negotiation
and more give and take
and more and
more of the latter

the situation changed
no more thought of murdering
each other
over matters political

happy that
recourse to such violence

could only be the result
of neglect or jealousy or
bitterness
of a far more
intimate, homely, face-to-face variety.l

in the
final (by which
we mean
human) analysis

Killing each other for or over
love not seeming so bad.

We might
honestly kill each other
for the joy and
Hell of it

again and again,