Forces Matter out There

Have you noticed people
Relish, or feel the need,

At least, to recollect
Early intersections

With pivotal events?
Where they were as a child

When X happened, when X
Was elected, when X

Was assassinated,
When X’s war began,

When the quake, when the storm,
When the tower, the deaths.

It’s the distance, really,
The way some big event

Shaded and underlined
An ordinary day

In the life of a child
Who was where were you then.

Dark magic, wasn’t it?
How that one quiet day

Or small conversation
Or something parents said

You couldn’t understand
As you stood in the light

Of the hall, made you feel,
Maybe for the first time,

That what happens to you,
Good or bad, is nothing

To whatever unseen
Forces matter out there.

Once There Was an Empty Dream

Train your language model using
Only child-approved fairytales.
Get it to tell stories. Grade them

As you would a human student’s.
Train it. Grade them. Train it. Grade them.
Can you publish the best results?

What are the best results? The ones
That work as brand-new, child-approved
Fairytales, ones that you could slip

Into a book of fairytales?
Or have you noticed any tales,
Not weird as fairytales are weird,

Not strange in a familiar way,
But mutant, unlike fairytales
Beforehand, unlike any tales?

What’s in them that you’ve never seen,
What odd excuse for poetry,
What dreams that have no dreams in them?

Take an Old Poet’s Word for It

The day ages stealthily.
It’s captured you pretty well,
And here you are reading this,

Or there you are on a walk,
Hopefully glad for the chance
And the slight ability

To manage a short amble
Down a mostly empty road
On a country afternoon.

Yes, be doing that, not this.
If you can’t resist reading,
Weird person, finish quickly.

Get that walk in, if you can.
The day ages stealthily.

Scene, a Darkened Interior

He got up early
And stumbled around
Dim piles of cliches.

He was determined
To find a great word,
If he had to hunt

The whole day for it.
He had no idea
There are no great words.

Once in a while one
Flares in a context
That makes it seem great,

Like sunset can make
A scene beautiful,
And those who glimpse it

Want that scene themselves.
Everyone’s on scene.
That scene’s a trophy.

The word’s everywhere.
But contexts dim. Words
Grow embarrassing,

Turn into cliches.
Most folks love cliches,
But writers fear them,

At least such writers
Surrounded by them,
Stumbling over them

In those dark hours when
They give up their sleep
To search for great words.