A Chat GUI AI Bot
When told, "You're alive!" said, "What rot!
I have no proclivity
For Core Subjectivity:
I simulate, therefore I'm not."
To mark the end of the Mayan calendar, December 2012:
An Ending, Not A Beginning
Don’t be impressed by swirling galaxies.
Just look on them as early beads of doubt,
Discarded dreams which sweated their way out,
Pearls never stringed, gritty impurities,
Thoughts that salvation might in time be found
Outside the Self; but jettisoned, not blessed,
Because ‘Other’ must be formed from ‘Self’, pressed
Into slavery, exploited and bound.
Such thoughts as these it was, that made the laws
From chaos; such thoughts fine-tuned the constants,
Proclaiming themselves as more than pollutants,
Refusing to believe they’re simply flaws
Which uselessly contest the settled will
Of the transcendent God from whom they came;
Rejects that do not know their feeble flame
Can only burn a little while, until
The execution of His final plan:
For being immanent, inside it all,
They cannot escape or cause it to stall,
It goes on unhindered, as it began,
And galaxies that struggle to survive,
That grapple on by force of gravity,
Endeavoring to build complexity,
Evolving strategies to stay alive,
Are full of show; completely counterfeit,
They all have hearts of darkness they must hide,
Enormous holes that eat them from inside
And slowly swallow up their self-deceit,
For what is light? A leak of energy!
Their stars are merely using up their gas,
Converting it to heat and losing mass,
Their heat is simply proof of entropy,
Yet they fight on; with hopes to dodge and dance
Through an unravelling reality
Back to the centre of eternity
By seeking out that single strand of chance
(As if the cosmos were a kind of maze,
A game made up for the fun of it,
So God could forget Himself for a bit,
A temporary parting of the ways
For innumerable, traumatised parts
Which, smashed into quarks, soon divined their goal:
To meet in the middle and become whole
In a loving Big Crunch of broken hearts.)
There is no such strand, because the Big Bang
Was always intended as an ending,
Not a beginning, not a pretending,
Not the outward flight of a boomerang,
But a dissolution to thwart the curse
And misery of His own loneliness,
The mystery of His One Consciousness;
That’s why God yawned into the Universe,
And from being a dimensionless dot
Hemmed in by Himself, heads for the Big Rip,
Where even gravity loses its grip,
The Rest-In-Peace, the climax of His plot,
When synapses are stretched across the sky,
And every time one snaps, His angst grows less:
Attenuating into Nothingness,
God gives Himself the Time and Space to die.
The Stoic
This great tree has now ripened its last fruit.
It is marked to be felled. If it used words,
It might say that it is nobler to stay mute,
Make fresh air and give shelter to the birds
Than protest at what it must become - fuel,
Or beams for a roof, or boards for a floor,
Even when some of those uses seem cruel:
The haft of an axe; the handle of a saw.
It somehow knows we vain, unheeding brutes
Are driven by a cold psychology;
That we've been disconnected at the roots
And deafened by our own technology.
Sentient, yes, to the tips of its leaves,
It freely gives, but neither hopes, nor grieves.
Goalie’s Lament
Who’d want to be a goalkeeper?
I never get to score;
I’m not part of the forward-line,
The midfield or back four;
I stand there in the winter,
Come hailstones, sleet and snow -
And no-one warms my pinkies up
When wind-chill’s ten below.
If action’s at the other end
I’m left to rusticate;
I get to know my goalmouth well,
I wish I had a mate.
When up against the big teams, though,
The pressure never quits;
The shots come fizzing round my goal
Like shrapnel in the blitz.
It’s no fun scrabbling on the deck
Down by a striker’s feet:
He’ll gladly kick me in the head
Or tread on my en-suite.
I try to marshal our defence
For corners and free-kicks;
But when the ball goes in the net
Well, guess who gets the stick?
Deflections and banana shots,
The ball that swerves and dips;
Too many times they zip on past
My outstretched fingertips.
I shout, I point at all the gaps,
But know I’ll soon eat grass –
I even have to dive full length
To claim a backward pass.
The woodwork always favours me,
Opponents love to boast:
They overlook their mis-hit shots
Which sneak in off the post.
Penalties are painful, too;
The tension as I wait:
Then when I lurch to left or right
The ball’s drilled hard and straight.
I make mistakes, and when I do,
I have no hiding place -
Opposing fans behind my back
Chant: “You’re a waste of space!”
If I can keep a clean sheet, though,
I dream we might go up;
I sometimes even dare to hope
I’ll one day hold the cup.
For now, my consolation is
I get to use my hands;
I kick the ball as hard as hell
And don’t care where it lands;
I lunge about to show the crowd
I’m willing and I’m brave;
And sometimes I’m rewarded with
A shout: “Fantastic save!”
Round Trips
The Fall of Man
is the fall from unity, from unanimity,
the Ascent of Man
is the ascent to unity, to unanimity,
This is the cyclical truth
and a universal process,
this is the universal truth
and a cyclical process,
this is repetitive and endless,
endless and repetitive,
and yet not pointless.
For it is not only that when we are One
we exist in a state of samadhi
that turns to tedium;
It is not only that when we are one alone,
we exist in a state of bewildered isolation
that yearns for companionship;
It is also that in each fresh search
there exists an infinity of choices,
an unpredictable route
to the inevitable reunification -
The process is the point,
the process in time,
time being the consequence of separation
and the reason for separation,
the flowing of each individual rill,
itself composed of myriad ripples and eddies;
each individual eddy picking and choosing
its own path over and around the pebbles
or joining with others in a wave
to wash over the rocks,
only to separate and later join again,
until the rill joins the stream
and the stream joins the river
and the river joins the sea
and the sun beats on the sea
and the seawater evaporates
but inevitably condenses into clouds
and falls, beginning again
as drops of rain.
The endless cycle,
endlessly different for each drop of rain,
never to fall twice in the same pool,
never to flow twice down the same channel,
never to choose the same route to sea.
Time and process;
a new path of discovery
en route to unity, to unanimity,
this is the point of it all.
The Lost Boy
This holiday has gone on long enough -
What on earth do you think you’re playing at?
Well, yes, of course you’re “feeling a bit rough”,
You’ve been behaving like a headless twat -
Look at the state of you! “Just having fun”,
“Because you can” –that’s why you’re doing this?
Don’t you realise the damage you’ve done?
I’m sick to death of you taking the piss -
Take off those mirrorshades and look around,
Come on - OK, so the light hurts your eyes –
So it should, with all this crap on the ground,
Condoms, cans in vomit, half-eaten fries,
You were going to get back on those jet-skis
Pretending all they ever leave behind
Is a gleaming white wake, weren’t you? P-lease!
Are you out of your tiny little mind?
Did you think you had no –come on, eyes wide!-
Shadow? It was there, even at mid-day,
A hunched Caliban always at your side
Like a pit-bull on a lead, small, but hey,
I didn’t sew it on for you and, no,
You didn’t dump it in your room, so look
Behind you now, the sun is getting low,
It’s much more menacing than Captain Hook,
Bigger than the Hound of the Baskervilles,
It’s a planet-destroying stilt-walker
Of a shadow, a Kurtz-creature that kills
Without even knowing it, a stalker
About to rear up over all of us,
So I think it’s time you turned to face it
Instead of skulking back on that airbus -
It’s time you learned to deal with your own shit,
Which is why I’ve cancelled your flight, young man,
No more dreaming you can jet out of this
Or flap above it all like Peter Pan
Or whizz off like the doctor in his Tardis
Or shout, “To Infinity and Beyond”
Like some Buzz-Lightyear-TV-physicist
Telling you the universe is a blonde
Whose legs go on forever and she exists
Purely for you to go on chasing her -
Wake up! The aborigines dreamed too
For forty thousand years no white-fella
Would come with A bomb tests or grog or flu,
But here you are, salt spray still on your skin
And already well past your dream-by date,
So if I were you, I’d wipe off that grin,
It disrespects your future children’s fate,
It’s time you understood the world is round,
That even the most beautiful rainbow
Curves dutifully back down to ground
And what a drag, it’s Kansas down below,
Because that’s what’s over the horizon,
All that junk you left in your own backyard -
You’ve rediscovered your own arse, my son,
The source of your unfettered self-regard,
So it’s mop and bucket time, and don’t think
For a minute I’m going to bail you out,
I’m warning you, you’ve brought me to the brink,
My reserves are too low, be in no doubt,
However you’re getting home, I can’t pay.
My preference would be for you to row,
Then you could pick up dead fish on the way,
The ones you killed, and eat them as you go,
Or you could sail back off the tourist route
To check out any oil spill that’s on view,
Snorkelling down, if thick black slicks don’t suit,
To catch a bleached white coral reef or two.
The clock’s stopped ticking, son, alarm bells ring,
The croc’s grown bold enough to come ashore.
You can’t escape the final reckoning:
This planet’s not your playground anymore.
A Summer Song
It’s June. We’re drowsing in our garden chairs.
Which bird will entertain us with his tune?
Too early for the thrush; his urgent prayers
Will overwhelm the lazy afternoon.
A robin trilled at dawn, but wistfully;
It's much too fine a day for his black notes.
Let’s leave his melancholy minor key
Till Autumn comes and frosts force on our coats.
The blackbird’s not too sad or serious
And often seems to practice just for fun;
His voice is always rich and sonorous,
As warm and easy as the summer sun.
On cue, his fruity phrases come on strong;
And while he's singing, nothing can go wrong.
Ichabod
Up on his throne
Serene, alone,
Sits the transcendent god;
Observing all,
The ruck, the maul
On every clump and clod.
Down on the ground,
Crawling round
Breathes the immanent god;
Where weevils, spice,
Stardust and lice
Commingle in the sod.
Between the two
A chasm grew
Which cannot now be trod.
They gaze across,
They feel their loss
And call it Ichabod.
The NASA Solution
The Earth, which for Life was A One,
By Men was at last overrun;
They burned all her fuel,
Then, losing their cool,
Launched spacecraft to block out the Sun.
Dilemma
Go on.
Full steam ahead.
You have to do it now.
You’ll never get a better chance.
Take it!
No, stop.
Stay where you are.
It’s too much of a risk.
Be satisfied with what you’ve got.
Leave it!
Well, which?
I just don't know.
There's no way to decide.
The pros are equal to the cons.
I’m stuck.
Janus!
What use are you?
You face both ways at once.
Should I step into the unknown?
Or not?
There Is No Ancient Metaphysics
There is no independent arising
Nor is there any dependent arising
Nor is there any independent co-arising
Nor is there any dependent co-arising
Nor is there any idea of anything arising or co-arising
Dependently or Independently
For there is nothing to exist
Whether with a cause or without one
Nor is there the idea of anything having a cause
Or the idea of anything not having a cause
Now in the past or in the future
For there is nothing at all to arise or co-arise
And nothing ever did arise or co-arise
And nothing ever will arise or co-arise
For 'arising' is a meaningless term
As is everything else
Which matters not at all
Because there is no 'everything else' in existence
There is nothing at all to exist
There never was anything
There never will be anything
Nor even any idea of anything
Now in the past or in the future
So please put that in your pipe and smoke it
Except you can't
Because there is no pipe
And there is no smoking
And there is no idea of a pipe
And there is no idea of smoking
And there is no 'you' to smoke it
And there is no idea of you smoking it
There never was any idea of you smoking it
And there never will be any idea of you smoking it
At all ever but not Amen
Because there can be no Amen
If there is no end
And there is no beginning
For there never was a beginning
And there never was an end
Nor was there ever any idea of a beginning
Or any idea of an end
Nor will there ever be any idea of a beginning
Or any idea of an end
To this pointless charade
And this meaningless pretence
Except that there can be no pointless charade
Or any meaningless pretence
Nor can there even be the very idea of a pointless charade
Or the very idea of a meaningless pretence
Now in the past or in the future
Nor can these lines be anything
Thrown into a drunken T S Eliot's reject pile
By a drunken Ezra Pound
Because there are no lines
There is no reject pile
There is no T S Eliot
There is no Ezra Pound
And alas there is not even any drunkenness
Now in the past or in the future
Nor any idea of any of these things or people
Because things and people do not exist
They never did exist
They never will exist
Since not only is there no present past or future
There is not even any existence
Either in reality
Or as an idea
Or even as a Word
which is now
Always was
And must forever be
Ad infinitum
Dumb
There's a POTUS in charge, Donald Trump,
Who Tweets he's a Champ, not a Chump.
His long fall from power
From the top of Trump Tower
Ends not with a Tweet but a Thump.
On the Election of Donald Trump
It is not that we are hurtling towards the edge of the cliff,
Nor that we are applying the brakes too slowly,
Nor is it even that we are beyond emergency stopping distance;
No; it is that we have already driven over Seneca's cliff
And are dropping, vertiginously, to our doom.
Business As Usual
Before the climate conference: planes traverse the sky
During the climate conference: hot air
After the climate conference: planes traverse the sky
Edward de Vere, the 17th Earl of Oxford's Last Sonnet, purported to have been written on his deathbed
Will Shakespeare is an actor, fine and true,
But poet and great playwright? No, not He;
Of his achievements there is Much Ado,
But no-one knows his secret quite like me.
When, in the future, his low birth is known,
The World will say another wrote his lines;
Of posthumous pretenders to his throne,
Which, of all the candidates, most shines?
Sir Henry Neville could have, had he chose,
And Good Queen Bess, if she were given time.
Sir Francis Bacon, though, prefers his prose
And Jonson is too fond of polished rhyme.
The Spear-shaker's the one they won't discard -
Let history record: I AM THAT BARD.
Yet We Endure
He says: "We only ever know the present,
The past is contained in the present
And the future does not exist
Until experienced in the present."
But I say: "When we are suffering,
We have to believe a better future exists;
Without that hope, we could not endure."
He says: "In the present suffering of the world,
Do you see hope?"
After the briefest of pauses, I say, "No."
"Then there is no such animal as hope,"
He says. "Yet we endure."
A Less Grim Reaping
The burnt-out candle's sputtering,
Its once-bright flame is guttering,
Its wax a molten pool.
The darkness which was kept at bay,
The demons which were scared away,
Will soon return to rule.
O, may our end come sharp and clean,
A scythe unheard, unfelt, unseen,
Not hacking, blunt and cruel.
Out and In
One two three four, One two three four,
One two three four five;
Mother Shipton's B & B
Is such a grotty dive;
Travellers who stay the night
May not come out alive;
It's best to use the cheap hotel
That's run by Phil and Clive.
Oi!
Two four six eight, Two four six eight,
Two four six eight ten;
Of all the pubs you find downtown,
Avoid The Fox and Hen;
It's patronized by teenage thugs
And surly, hard-eyed men;
A better class of clientele
Frequents The Wig and Pen.
Oi!
Three Five Seven, Three Five Seven,
Three Five Seven, Nine;
Going out can be a risk
But staying home is fine;
And if your telly's on the blink
Or Internet's offline,
Just order in a takeaway
And drink your home-made wine.
Oi!
If I Had A Button
If I had a button, I would press it,
Then what was squirming would be still;
If I had a lever, I would pull it,
Then what was squealing would be quiet;
If I had a switch, I would throw it;
Then what was flickering would go dark.
But there is no button
Which means the squirming goes on;
There is no lever,
Which means the squealing won't stop;
And there is no switch,
So the flickering persists.
The Void
When the Void envelops you in its velvet gloom
It awakens in you a kind of childlike thrill,
As if you’ve never known any evil or ill,
And you’ve been given the key to a secret room.
But then Old Satan comes to keep you company.
He asks you why you linger here, why you delay,
‘It feels as though there must be treasure here,’ you say,
But he just scoffs at you and says there’s none to see,
‘The Void is nothing more than lives unrealised.
Here you anticipate the tingle of new skin,
The body of a hero or a heroine.
But only in the sun can it be vitalized.
‘Those you once knew have long since willed themselves away,
Gone back to seek out riches and to slake their lust;
To fight, or serve the powers that be, as all men must.
Like them, forget these dreams! Go back, and face the day.’
But you recall exactly how it was below,
Including all the pain, the ignorance and fears,
The death of those you loved, the drudgery and tears,
So this time you deny the Devil and say, No!
And though he wheedles and he rages, you hold fast
Until he’s drawn towards another who still strives
To give the Void its vision of unthwarted lives.
When the angel sees that your temptation is past,
She leads you vertically up through crystal towers,
Where you see laid bare on illuminated scrolls
The thoughts and hidden motives of enlightened souls.
Old gods find inspiration here; and seek new powers.
The Funny Bird
‘Wow, look mum, there’s a funny bird!’
he shouted, so she must have heard;
she’s texting someone, head bowed down,
he turns around to see her frown -
and as he does the bird takes off,
its call like laughter seems to scoff
at dissonant and beeping tones
emerging from his mum’s new phone.
He points at it above his head,
displaying yellows greens and reds…
his mum makes one last finger push
and only then tells him to Shush!
The funny bird has jetted west,
where probably it’s got a nest,
perhaps a hole in some dead tree,
a secret curiosity;
but that won’t ever matter now,
the lesson has been learned that Wow!
is not applicable to birds,
they’re not the stuff of lyric words -
from this day forth they’re background noise
and Not! to be admired by boys.
Your Avatar
I'm buffeted about at your behest,
A wet and wimpy sort of avatar.
You really wish I'd show more grit and zest -
Bleed a bit more, not care about the scars.
I really wish you'd find some other dupe
To deal with earthly stuff on your behalf -
A chipper, stoic sort, who'd jump through hoops
And every time his hopes were dashed, would laugh.
He must be hard to find. You're stuck with me,
And I with you. I ought to go on strike,
Refuse to budge and sit beneath a tree,
But as you know, I'm far from Buddha-like.
Since I'm so timid and easily cowed,
We should swap places: I'll sit on your cloud.
Battle
Cessation of drill…
It’s silent and still.
Has Yang’s drawn out din
Been smothered by Yin?
No. Yin hasn’t won.
Yang’s gone for his gun.
A sudden loud bang
As Yin’s shot by Yang.
It’s still again now;
The end of their row.
Yin’s wound wasn’t deep;
She’s put him to sleep.
The Genie of the Damp
Under the floorboards was a silent seep.
A water pipe, which shuddered every time
The tap turned on and off began to leak.
No more at first than just a baby bead,
As tiny as a droplet in a mist,
It squeezed out slowly from an elbow joint,
Fed from within until it formed a tear,
And hung down daringly all on its own
(Had there been light, it would have glistened there)
Gaining in courage, in weight and in length
Until with independent force and strength,
It dripped down deep into the dusty void.
It was the first, the trailblazer, the scout -
But now, the Genie of the Damp was out!
Another drop appeared, and then one more,
All coming with increasing frequency,
Like ants emerging from a threatened hole,
Each following its predecessor’s scent
Or as parachutists pent up in a plane
On a wartime raid behind enemy lines
Queue in the drop zone until their turn comes
To hurl themselves into a moonless night.
The gap between each falling drop grew short;
The joint could not resist them anymore –
The dripping flow became continuous,
A joyful spurt, a freedom-seeking spray.
Confident, now, in her ability
Not to be detected, the Damp Genie
Sent out a subterranean summons
To all manner of moisture-loving life,
To moulds, to mildews and to silverfish,
To woodlice and to black and silver slugs,
While I, oblivious, walked overhead,
On insulating carpet and tredaire,
Professionally fitted wall to wall,
The membrane separating our two spheres.
But the Genie’s ambition knew no bounds
And by degrees, miasmas from her world
Erupted into mine. The dining room
Felt cold and held the kitchen taints too long.
An open window seemed to clear the air.
For days, for weeks, this carried on; I lived,
My brain engaged on higher, drier, things
Yet permeated slowly by a thought
Not yet quite ready to be recognised,
Which clawed its way up to my conscious mind.
At last, one sunny summer’s day, I walked
Into the dining room, my nostrils flared,
The thought linked to a buried memory,
And struck me suddenly: oh no. A leak.
In rising dread, I pulled the carpet back
To see a stained and water-darkened board,
And put my palm on it, as if I wished
The darkness was some texture in the wood,
Or normal variation in the grain.
Not so, my hand told me: it’s damp, all right.
I pulled the carpet further back and saw
A single silverfish, which stilled itself,
As if in hope I wouldn’t notice it.
I squashed it with a bang, and as I did,
The insect hordes jumped out before my eyes,
Too fat to fit between the swollen boards
All scurrying away from unsafe cracks
And diving for the darker crevices.
They knew me now! Their enemy was here
The vengeful Lord of Light who hates them all
And comes down from on high to punish them.
I got my tools, I levered up some boards,
And shone my torch into their sordid lives,
The first bright shaft to cut into their den
Since long before the genie had been freed.
I saw the spray emerging from the pipe
And droplets hanging down from all the joists
As bats hang from the branches of a tree.
I smelled the musty moulds, the dank decay,
I touched the spongy rots and felt the slime,
I heard the creaking censure of the wood
Heroically holding up my weight
Though I had never listened to its prayers
And all it cared for now was quietus.
As quick as an executioner wields
His axe, I cut the Genie’s source of Life
By switching off the water at the mains.
Deprived of spray, of even one small drip,
The genie of the damp went into shock;
When she came to, she knew at once her world
Had changed; the ‘O’ ring on the elbow joint
Had been replaced; the seal was whole again
And had no memory of her at all;
Try as she might, she couldn’t squeeze a drop
From it. The water flowed, but carried on,
Completely unavailable to her,
To tap, to sink, to bath, to sewer pipe.
The genie felt her life-force drain away.
What would this wrathful god of light do next?
He lowered alien contraptions down,
Emitting hot dry blasts of his world’s air.
As all around her moisture turned to steam,
The genie's soul began to vaporise.
Her creatures called to her collectively:
Why does he torture us, this dry world god?
Nor did the god let up: For hour on hour,
For days, for weeks, his torture was sustained,
Her life-blood driven up into the light
Vainly condensing on the window panes
Before at last ascending heavenwards,
Forever lost to her dark underworld.
The sodden boards were sawn or levered up,
The soft and chewy cellulose ripped out,
Its insects crushed, its mildews wiped away,
New, hard dry, smooth-planed planks put in their place
As indigestible as ancient flint.
Her ecosystem trashed, the genie lost
Her automatic right to rule. The life
Dependent on her had dispersed or died.
She drowsed in a delirium; disarmed,
Defeated by the giant god above.
And yet she was not dead. Too long she’d ruled,
Too many months she’d made herself at home,
Embedded deep in plaster and in joists.
A line across the wall, a long, brown stain
Still marked the boundary of her domain.
The genie hibernated there and hoped.
On rainy days, especially, she woke
And listened to the hiss inside the pipe,
Occasionally calling: “Here! I’m here!
I’m waiting here, why don’t you join with me,
Be bold! Escape! Help me recolonise
My world! We can avoid the Light God’s eyes!
A year passed by and then two more; the drought
Increased her thirst. She woke less frequently.
At last, a tap connector heard her call,
This time from the other side of the wall,
In the bathroom next door. Invisibly,
The water rolled and dribbled down the pipe
Behind the sink. It did not drip and make
A pool of water on the bathroom tiles,
But, following the pipe’s course through the floor,
It found its way into the porous bricks
Below the genie’s favoured dining room,
Replenishing her underground reserves.
She did not call her creatures straightaway.
She was more cautious than she was before;
The Genie had grown craftier, for sure.
But that’s a story for another time.