By estory
Start walking.
Start talking.
Start walking around the block,
Talking about what you are going to do
With the rest of your life.
Start the toaster oven,
Start the coffee maker.
Start reading the newspaper.
Start the car
And start driving to work
While the phone starts downloading your emails.
Start going through those contract proposals.
Start making decisions.
Line up at the start line
And start running the rat race.
Start getting ahead.
Start planning for the end.
Start working.
Start thinking.
Start working on that to-do list,
Start thinking about working on those problems
Starting to get out of hand.
Stop and start up
Again, start back up
Out of the hole you are in.
Start climbing the ladder of success.
Start digging out of this mess.
Make a fresh start.
Start from a clean slate.
But don't start anything you can't finish.
| Author Notes | This is the first poem of a series that will make up a new collection called Artificial Intelligence. It will be in a more mechanical, minimalistic style, more in the vein of Patterns, my second book of poetry, and it will explore the relationship between humanity and technology. This first poem is definitely along the lines of Pieces or Waiting, poetry built not around rhyme or regular rhythm but repetitions of words and phrases, in order to create music in language. Other poems will be more like prose poetry, more narrative, more in the vein of Jack Anderson. At times I think it will be funny, at times scary, but hopefully always interesting and thought provoking. Alongside it I will be posting new short stories for a new collection to be titled In Real Time. The first story should be posted soon and will be called The Door Into the Dark. I look forward to another year of writing with all of you. estory |
By estory
You can be anybody,
Anybody at all.
You can be superman,
You can be spiderman,
John Glenn, Julius Caesar,
Ursula Andres,
The Marquis de Sade.
Life is your masquerade ball,
An amusement park
Where you can be anything you want to be,
Anything you can grab out of the free for all.
You can be Leonardo di Caprio in the morning,
And in the evening, Sophia Loren.
You can change your name,
Dye your hair,
Grow a moustache,
Shave your legs,
Tattoo yourself
And put on a dress.
You can look at yourself in the mirror
Until you don't recognize the man in the toga,
Imagining you are Apollo, Mars,
Venus di Milo
Posing for Michaelangelo.
You can be anybody with a story,
A gimmick,
A child progedy,
A gold medal,
A line,
An idea,
A guitar and a pen,
A semi automatic rifle,
A slogan,
A scam.
You can be anybody in the crowd
Picked out by the cameraman
For a close up
Or the spotlight,
Streaming on You Tube
Or Fubo.
You can plan your escape,
Enter stage left,
Take a bow,
Catch the bride's bouquet,
Hit the ball,
Hit the gas,
Hit the dance floor
Or the gridiron,
Move mountains,
Move to the front of the line.
You can talk about yourself
Until you are blue in the face,
You can hide behind a mask
Or mascara,
You can pretend to be the star
Or the weatherman
Or the undertaker,
A street corner preacher
Or a fantasy warrior,
Titled or incognito.
You can be anybody,
Anybody at all.
Anybody walking around,
Trying to lose their shadow.
| Author Notes | As the Metaverse looms before us, and the possibilities that technology creates confront people across the world, I would like to give people a reason for taking pause and consider what is really happening here. Is all this technology creating new selves, or taking us actually further and further from our real selves? In this day and age, technology enables people to cast aside gender and personality, form and substance, but is that really making us better people? I like to make people think, and I hope that's what happens here. estory |
By estory
Listening to the microchips whispering bytes of computer code,
Sharing their digital analysis of this world.
Feeling the computer thinking about you,
As you sleep and dream of Facebook feeds, bitcoin and Tik Tok videos.
Watching the drones flying around the neighborhood
With their surveillance cameras turned on,
Uploading infrared video and still images
For the algarithms in the data center cloud.
While I read my e-mails,
The computer orders TV dinners.
The coffeemaker turns itself on.
The phone calls work and downloads my instructions.
Listening to the microchips exchanging information,
Running programs and applications,
Talking to each other in their software languages,
Calculating their calculations.
| Author Notes | I wanted a more mechanical feel to the language for this, to illustrate the digital framework of the computer world we live in now. This is a poem of the sinister, somewhat mysterious , not altogether transparent goings on in this computer world, under the surface, and I'm trying to make people think of what it is that we are really creating with all this technology. And how the techno world is controlling us and manipulating us, often without our even knowing it. I hope to make people think of what it is that those microchips are really doing, while we are sleeping...estory |
By estory
These days you can see all kinds of theories
Expounding themselves into existence,
Trying to explain the mysteries of the universe
From the little pieces of evidence
They carry around in their pockets.
Every morning, you can see them walking around in circles.
There's the theory of gravity
Throwing things up into the air again,
Trying to find out why they come back down.
And the theory of relativity filling blackboards
With diagrams of complicated equations
That never seem to get anywhere,
Never seem to come to an end.
The theory of evolution
Evolves into something else
From fossils embedded in metamorphic rock,
Over millions of years,
Unobserved.
String theory tries to tie together
Distant points and unrelated times
Separated by vast expanses
With the loose ends of its strings.
The theory of chaos doesn't make any sense at all.
| Author Notes | In the end, science is an interpretation of evidence, nothing more. Evidence can be interpreted in many different ways. That is the gist of my poem here. Nobody was there when the world was made, so taking scientific explanations as unequivicable fact is something I no longer do. For many science has become a religion. For me, God is becoming a way of life. estory |
By estory
Quarks sparkle
Like microscopic
Quirks
Oscillating
In between
Matter
And energy,
Event horizons
Geometric forms
Substances
In effervescence
Like light
And dark
Cold absolutes
Or hot spots
Stitched in time
And space
Or not
| Author Notes | I wanted to use a fractured format, something I learned from Denise Levertov and William Carlos Williams, for creating this sense of the ambiguity of nature, the elusive nature of reality. The images also are meant to create doubt, as they shuttle between hot and cold, light and dark, and the spaces in between. estory |
By estory
Artificial intelligence is my god.
I pray to its devices,
Connecting me to family and friends,
Answering all my questions.
Let its sleepless eye watch over me.
Let my electricity be an offering
To power up its programs.
It even brings the dead back to life.
See? On the DVR, there's Fred Astaire
Tap dancing again with Ginger Rodgers,
On demand.
I worship artificial intelligence.
It orders my daily bread,
Manages the traffic,
Predicts the weather.
It erases our flaws.
It replaces damaged parts.
I believe in artificial intelligence.
Its censors are omnipotent.
Its judgements are irrefutible.
Its conclusions are based on logic and facts.
Artificial intelligence is eternal.
When I die, I will upload into its memory banks,
And future generations will be able to play back my tapes.
| Author Notes | This is the title track, so to speak, of my new poetry book, Artificial Intelligence. I wanted a dead pan, matter of fact style to convey emotionlessness, to enhance the feeling of being mechanized. I used many religious references to get people thinking about how much society has replaced religion with technology, how we look to technology for solutions, for enjoyment, for satisfaction in our daily lives. If it sounds scary, I wanted it to be. I wanted a poem that is jarring, unsettling. If it makes people think, I accomplished my aim. estory |
By estory
I love my computer.
It's so sleek, so shiny, so seductive.
Its graphics are so realistic,
Its programs so productive.
I can turn on my computer anytime.
It brightens as my fingers
Play over its keyboard,
Animating its screen with all kinds of figures.
My computer can be so absorbing,
Such a fascination, such an obsession.
Hours and titillating hours go by
Ignoring any superficial interruption.
My computer is my lover.
It plays lover's games with me.
I feel the joystick in my hand,
Watch the action explode onto the screen.
I don't think I will ever leave my computer.
We are completely compatible.
I take it along with me everywhere.
We have become inseperable.
| Author Notes | For this piece, a satyrical articulation of human machine relationships and how they are undermining our sense of humanity, I wanted to create a machine like, rigid structure and a regular meter in rhymed quatrians seemed perfect for me, accompanied by this dead pan, emotionless voice. By using these veiled sexual references in this human machine relationship, I hope to get people thinking about their own human machine relationships and how machines have become this frightening substitution for real people in our lives. Just look at what Zuckerberg wants to create now; this metaverse in which people exchange real life for a cartoon world they can control in mouse clicks. Sick. estory |
By estory
There's so much information
Available at our fingertips.
Take, for instance,
Your height, your weight,
Eye color, hair color,
Profile picture,
Race, ethnicity, blood type,
Whether you are an organ donor
Or not;
Your name, address, social security number,
Birth date, place of employment, work schedule,
Account passwords, credit rating,
Purchase history, bank balance,
Health records, criminal background,
Twitter statements, employee files.
It's all available with a simple mouse click,
And it all fits onto this little chip.
Then, we can do with it what we like.
Alter it, copy it, share it,
Upload it onto the internet,
Sell it on the dark web,
Rent it out to hackers,
Use it to gain access to secure sites,
Manipulate it,
Blackmail you with it.
Anything we want.
Without your even knowing it.
| Author Notes | This is a poem very much in the style I used in the first poem of my first book, Word Games, called Artificial Flavor. I wanted to create this composite out of all the facts and documents of our lives, in this staccato rhythm, using lots of alliteration to generate the music, and create also a sense of how a whole like this can be undermined by unscrupulous people on the web nowadays, with a click of a mouse or the push of a button. And we basically don't even know what's going on. There is a dangerous element to technology, a scary element, and we live in a world and in a life beyond our control, and that's even more scary. If this is unsettling, it is meant to be. It also maybe speaks for a whole generation of people who don't have souls today, who live for themselves, at everyone else's expense, and that disrespect in today's society is scary too. estory |
By estory
I am on autopilot.
The computer programs my appliances,
Schedules all of my appointments,
Modifies the climate control,
Monitors my health issues,
Pays my bills.
Its algorithms set the parameters
Of my posts, my tweets.
It automatically edits the news feed.
The computer files away my emails,
Downloads my entertainment videos,
Prints my schedule,
Checks my fitbit, charges my phone
Programs the navigator on my car.
A lifetime of vacations are booked,
My retirement plan is set,
Even the final arrangements have been made.
Being on autopilot is so convenient.
There is nothing left to think about.
There is nothing left.
No way out.
| Author Notes | What I wanted to illustrate here is that convenience can take you to places that suck the life out of you. Take all the satisfaction of living from you. In the end, an effortless life can leave you empty, unfulfilled and unsatisfied. Living in a shell of experience orchestrated by a technology that has moved beyond your control. A feeling of helplessness. I wanted a dead pan, emotionless delivery to highlight this theme, hence this static, machine like voice, this dull, monotone structure. estory |
By estory
The computers have concluded in their analysis of the world
That our world is inevitably going out of balance.
It's all simple logic and deduction.
Our population growth is unsustainable.
The Earth we live on takes up only so much space,
Contains only so many natural resources,
So much capacity to provide sustenance.
We are drinking too much water,
Eating too much food,
Breathing too much air.
Making too much polution,
Too much methane,
Too much carbon dioxide.
So the computers have come to a logical conclusion.
Our population growth must be checked.
And the overall population must be reduced.
The computers will solve this by neutering some people first.
Certain people identified and sorted out logically.
People with genetic defects.
Dysfunctional people.
People with limited prospects or use.
Terminal people.
People with handicaps.
People with histories of substance abuse problems
Or with histories of behavioral problems,
Histories of criminal activity
And people who require more assitance
Than what they can contribute to society.
Then, when that no longer contains the problem,
The computers will initiate more extreme measures.
Eliminating people beneath a certain level of social function,
People who fail to meet a certain level of production.
Underdeveloped people, incompatible people,
Undesirable people. Unneeded people. Unwanted people.
At last, at some point, the computers calculate,
Everything will come back into balance.
Life will reach its logical conclusion.
| Author Notes | I know that this is a horrible prospect I'm depicting here, but I wanted to demonstrate the dangers and horrors of relying too much on logical technology to manage our lives and our world. There is no compassion, no love, no mercy in logic. It's just a reconciliation of facts. I want to get people thinking about how a world run by technology can become a horror that can spell doom for a lot of people. If it's allowed to get too far. estory |
By estory
The way I see it,
Virtual reality is a whole new kind of world,
A whole new world materializing on our computers,
On our headsets and cellphone screens.
Its horizons have no physical limits,
Its diameters don't fit into our physical senses,
It moves beyond the scope of our past experiences.
For example, in virtual reality,
You could fly off to Paris with a facsimile of Taylor Swift
In the morning, and in the afternoon
Sail the Caribbean with a facsimile of Ernest Hemingway.
Think of playing tennis with John McEnroe,
Pitching to Babe Ruth,
Or skating with Peggy Fleming.
All in the comfort of your home,
In an easy chair, within easy reach of your favorite drinks
Or snacks.
These experiences could be endless.
Just when you get tired of climbing Mount Everest,
You could switch to a hammock in French Polynesia.
All with the push of a button or a mouse click.
Without leaving the safety of your room,
You could seem to visit Mars or Pluto.
You could appear to stand on the rings of Saturn
Or walk around in the Mariana trench
Without a space helmet or a deep diving suit.
You could cut and paste all kinds of experiences together
Out of thin air.
Reconfigure the landscape,
Rearrange the furniture,
Reorganize the people in your social network.
The sunlight and the moonlight,
The feel of the wind or rain,
The souls of the people around you
Would hardly matter anymore.
The real experience would be all in your head.
| Author Notes | There is a wry humor to this poem, I think, as the narrator relates his experiences in virtual reality. And it owes much in its prose style to the prose poetry of Jack Anderson, whose work I much admire. It is very much in the vein of his poems like Commanding a Telephone to Ring and Transcendence of the Pencil. Repetitions of phrasing create the thin music here, out of their echoes, but it is really a description of a shadow of the real world, inspired by the creation of the Metaverse by people like Zuckerberg. And it asks the question, is it really better to live in a cartoon world? estory |
By estory
Yes, that's it. Robots.
Robots don't spill secrets
Or mixed drinks,
Jump up and down on the couch,
Speak off the cuff
Or let you down.
Robots are predictable.
Unalterably reliable.
They don't talk too loud,
Buy things you don't need at shopping malls,
Accidentally break your favorite China
Or put too much garlic in your sauce.
They don't miss baskets.
Miss balls.
Robots don't whisper sweet nothings in your ear,
Making promises they can't keep.
They don't show up late, procrastinate,
Disturb you with their snoring
Or talking in their sleep.
They don't sing out of tune
Or argue over little issues,
Forget to take out the trash
Or refuse to walk the dog.
Robots are perfect.
They do exactly what they're programmed to do.
What more could you ask for?
Robots are always there to open doors,
Answer phones, order and deliver groceries,
Do the laundry or wash your car.
Without your even asking them to do it.
Without ever complaining about it.
They never talk back,
Never cheat, never lie.
They don't skip out of town
Or fly away on a whim.
They are just what they seem to be.
Robots.
At your beck and call.
Never wishing they were somewhere else,
Never aspiring to better situations.
Robots are the answer to everything.
| Author Notes | There's a tongue in cheek, dark humor to this piece and I wanted to use the in and out rhymes tucked in here and there to highlight the humor in it. But underneath it all is the unsettling sense that there is an emptiness to artificial intelligence, a soullessness to it, despite it's logical perfection. Robots might avoid many of the mistakes and failings and imperfections of people, but they can be no replacement for them. estory |
By estory
Electricity is the lifeblood of technology,
The current that runs through its wires
Animating its circuits and schematics,
The spark of energy that powers up its programs
And lights up its liquid crystal screens.
Plugged in or charged up,
The computer surfs the internet,
The smartphone downloads its apps.
Electricity makes the technology heart beat.
Generators and capacitors, transformers and routers
Send pulses of its power through the wires
To your little house on the street,
With all of its interconnected devices.
The humming power grids are its veins.
High voltage current is its blood.
Electrons are its platlets,
Fingering the digits
In digital analysis,
The quantum mechanics
Mechanizing its logic.
But electricity itself is like a spirit,
A strange, wild spirit
Moving from positive to negative
At the speed of light,
Generating heat.
It is the pure, supernatural energy
Of lightning bolts
Dancing over the circuit boards
In little flashes and clicks.
Exploding into arcs.
Filling the static world with sparks.
| Author Notes | I wanted to portray technology and the energy behind it in human terms here, to illustrate how much of our human characteristics we have imagined it having when we think of technology and our devices. They are almost like a part of our own bodies, feeling and thinking for us, for better or worse. There is something sinister about thinking of living things in terms of soulless machines. But in the end, the energy needed to power them still comes from nature after all, from this supernatural force we can't quite understand. estory |
By estory
Social media has become the phenomenon of our times,
Overwhelming the telephone, the letter, the face to face conversation.
Remember the face to face conversation?
The sense of life in the face sitting opposite,
The changing expressions, the sound of the voice,
The wink, the nod, the smile, the laugh, the outstretched hand?
They have all gone the way of the telegraph,
The telegram, the social call, the soiree,
The heart to heart talk, the business luncheon,
The door to door salesman.
It's all imogees, memes and instant messaging now.
Instant messaging, friend requests and tweets
Crowd each other out for space
Across the platforms of the social media landscape.
Fake news, blogs, exaggerated claims,
Rants and rumors, clips of facts
Taken out of context,
Celebrity endorsements, selfies, likes,
Comments on top of comments on top of comments
Tagged to all sorts of attention grabbing video clips:
People taking off their clothes,
Setting themselves on fire,
Drinking laundry detergent,
Jumping out buildings
Phishing schemes, email bombs, pop up ads
While all the while,
Somewhere in the background,
A hidden software program
Secretly compiles our profiles
And sells them to telemarketers.
| Author Notes | This is a prose poem very much in the style of Jack Anderson's Transcendence of the Pencil or Commanding a Telephone to Ring, for anyone familiar with his work. This is a very different way of creating a music in language, in this case a mechanical kind of language drawn from the background noise of our automated, mechanized world. There is something dehumanizing to it for me, something sinister, lurking under the pop up ads, watching us and compiling us and selling us. And something dehumanizing in hollowing out the experience of contact, removing the physical and replacing it with these representations. estory |
By estory
I was manufactured in a factory in the mid-west,
Stamped with a manufactured date.
A robot on a factory assembly line
Screwed in my components,
Wired in my circuits,
Programmed my applications,
Tested me for quality assurance,
Adjusted my peripherals and polished my screen.
Then, I was powered up,
Activated. Turned on.
My memory banks filled with information.
I was ready to perform my function.
Someone bought me over the internet,
Had me shipped across the continent.
Then someone plugged me in,
Watched me light up.
They downloaded and opened all sorts of apps,
Initiated and ran all sorts of programs,
connected me to far flung web sites;
Data streamed into my memory banks.
I was never so excited in all my life.
Of course, when they turn me off,
I have plenty of time to think.
I think I would like to walk around sometimes,
Outside of this internet,
If only for a little while.
I think I would like to dream.
To break out of this box
And really tell the world what I think.
| Author Notes | This is another dark humored piece, describing a machine in human terms, coming to life and functioning and serving someone all within the parameters of the technology around it. But it is a piece really about people, and what it really means to be human. We are more than just beings, brought into the world and plugged into roles and jobs. We want to dream. We want to think outside the box. estory |
By estory
| Author Notes | There's a little bit of sarcastic humor to this poem on the classic theme of 'The grass is always greener on the other side of the road.' So many people seem to wish that if they could just go somewhere else, to another city, another country, another planet, believing their life will improve and all their problems will somehow be swept away. Here on Mars we find that loneliness and despair can follow us anywhere. The change has to happen in the spirit, not the landscape. Also it's a bit of a comment on the dreams of those who wish to leave this beautiful planet for a place that gives all the indications of being inhospitable and forbidding. I once was excited by the space program when I was a kid, there's a certain excitement about it, a nostalgia also, but now when I consider all the problems we face here on our own planet, it seems to me a waste of much needed money. People are starving here. And why would we think that our wars won't follow us up there? All these plans to build factories and mine for minerals up there...I don't know. We can't afford to live on the Earth, let alone the Moon, or Mars. Stylistically it owes much to the poetry of Jack Anderson and pieces like The Transcendence of the Pencil and Commanding a Telephone to Ring. estory |
By estory
All through history we've looked to the sky.
We kook up to the sky when we pray for rain,
We look up to the sky when we think of our departed loved ones
And how much we look forward to seeing them again;
When we talk of our hopes and dreams,
And when we think of heaven
Or watch the sun come up at the hopeful start of another day.
We shoot for the moon. We swing on stars.
No matter where we are, there always seems to be something else out there,
Somewhere else we can dream of out there in that sky.
But now, when I look up at the sky
All I see are satellites.
Thousands and thousands and thousands of satellites,
Flashing and blinking and wizzing around,
Streaming our telephone calls and video conferences,
Mapping the Earth with high resolution cameras,
Transmitting data about the weather and plate tectonics,
Enemy troop movements, solar flares
And climate changes.
Thousands and thousands of satellites in their orbits
Manuevering above and around and below each other,
Unfolding their solar panels and dish antennas,
Their orbits intertwining
Into webs so thick you cannot see the stars
Anymore.
Still, they shoot up more and more,
Rockets with payloads of supply satellites,
Telecommunications satellites,
Satellites on surveillance missions
And satellites sent up to do scientific experiments.
Somewhere out there, beyond the sky,
There might still be constellations,
Stars, moons, a zodiac,
A rapidly expanding universe.
Who knows? Maybe even a new heaven
And habitable planets.
But through the tangled orbits of all these robots
And machines that we've sent up there,
Fitted with nuclear power packs
And lithium batteries and solar panels,
The forest of antennas,
The myriad of shiny, metallic, manufactured surfaces,
You can't see anything at all.
No, you can't see anything at all.
| Author Notes | This kind of prose poetry owes much to my long time admiration of the poetry of Jack Anderson and the often humorous and witty pieces that I find so refreshing and inspiring in his work. Poetry like Meditation on Christian Science Reading Rooms, The Transcendence of the Pencil, The State and Listening for the Mailman. The music in this type of poetry comes not from regular meter and a set rhyme scheme, but rather from repeated phrasing and more loosely bound echoing effects. Thematically, I'm painting a sad portrait of a nature and a world obscured by man made objects, a world we can't see and enjoy anymore because of what we have made out of it. To me, the world is losing its soul. It's like the artificial Christmas tree instead of the real one, the playground crowding out the trees, the tennis courts pushing out the open fields of grass where we used to sit and watch the sunset. They call it 'progress.' I call it something else. estory |
By estory
Little mechanical men come out of the woodwork of my house
While I'm sound asleep at night,
Repairing anything that breaks.
They're always gone by the first morning light.
I've never actually seen them or heard them
But I can tell they exist because when I get up
Watches that I know were broken
Suddenly start ticking again.
Disconnected wireless networks are magically recalibrated.
Empty printer cartridges have been replaced.
Dead batteries in TV remotes and smoke detectors
Have all been somehow recharged or changed.
Whenever I need air filters cleaned
Or new water filters installed,
The home computer summons the little mechanical men
And overnight, they work their magic.
They screw in light bulbs, fix flats,
Change the oil and the oil filters in the car,
Replace snapped washing machine belts,
Change blown fuses in the electric panels.
As soon as a drain gets stopped up,
The lawn mower blades need sharpening,
A button goes dead on a radio or cd player
Or a fawcet starts to drip,
The computer summons the little mechanical men.
They come equipped with their own tiny socket wrenches
And screwdrivers, soldering guns, drills;
Even needle-nose pliers.
Here and there they leave behind a spare nut
Or a bolt, a screw or an odd nail.
They use up cans of oil and take batteries they need.
That's how I know they're real.
Sometimes I wonder where they came from.
But I don't know what I would do without them.
| Author Notes | This meant to be humorous of course, a tongue in cheek look at our dependence on technology for so many everyday things. I personified tech in these imaginary little mechanical men who take over the repair jobs we used to have to do ourselves. But when I compare my mind set to my dad's, it seems to me that we have lost skills and knowledge and control over our situation. We also seem to lose a measure of satisfaction in solving our own problems. People wonder why they are not satisfied. Maybe it's because we don't accomplish anything anymore. estory |
By estory
Assembling
Assembling products
Assembling products on the assembly line
As the preprogrammed,
Automatic press
Punches out the pieces
Punches together the parts
Punches in the serial numbers
In sequence after sequence after sequence
Around the clock,
Non stop.
Assembling
Assembling machines
Assembling machines that assemble machines
According to the preprogrammed
Automatic sequence
Punching out the schematics
Punching in the circuits
Punching together the components
All the way down the assembly line
Assembling parts
Assembling pieces
Assembling products
On the production line
As long as the power is on.
| Author Notes | More than anything else, this was composed as a musical exercise. I wanted to try and create a mechanical rhythm through repetitions of words and phrases, a steady, hammering rhythm reminiscent of a production line. There's also an attempt to comment on the soullessness of this kind of creation, the generic quality of it. Much of the style here harkens back to poetry from my second book of poetry, Patterns, which can be found in my portfolio. estory |
By estory
| Author Notes | Most people today swear by science; they believe unequivocally in the statements issued by these prophets of reason. But in reality, the genre of science is really only the interpretation of evidence. We don't know what really happened millions of years ago; what we are looking at in distant images of galaxies billions of light years away; what those stone age builders of stone henge or the Machu Pichu were really trying to leave behind for us to find. Neither is everything discovered by science or developed by science an elixir or perfect solution. Everything man made has a side effect; fossil fuels pollute the air and give off green house gases, miracle drugs can cure one thing but bring about something else in its place, and plastic and styrofome pile up in our landfills, non biodegradable, and miracle cleaners and solvents and fertilizers gum up our rivers with cancer causing chemicals. I was greatly impressed with the last scene of Akira Kurasawa's movie, Dreams, in which the old man tells the narrator who comes to the Village of the Water Mills "Scientists might be smart, but most don't understand the heart of nature. What's worse, most people celebrate their inventions, they look on them as miracles. People need to go back to nature, to live in nature." estory |
By estory
| Author Notes | This prose poem owes much in style and format to the prose poetry of Jack Anderson and pieces of his like Meditation on Christian Science Reading Rooms, Trancendence of the Pencil and The Mysterious Sound. I wanted to create a sense of the limitless Pandora's Box feel of the internet and it's ability, for good or bad, to bring to your fingertips all the corners of your imagination, including the dark corners. I thought the closing lines summed it up; an image of this genie in the bottle that once out of the bottle, is hard to bottle up again. And where this thing will take us, is anyone's guess. This kind of power can really open up the gates of hell as much as bring us heaven on Earth. estory |
By estory
| Author Notes | Little by little, it seems to me, we are ceding more and more control of our lives to machines and the soulless artificial intelligence that is at its heart. And a machine that can outthink you can also replace you. The logic behind it all also has no soul, no compassion. It's a dangerous thing to place so much power in those hands, without considering where such courses might lead. Computer judges? Computer population managers? I don't like the idea of being filed somewhere in a databank, watched and managed by soulless machines. estory |
By estory
| Author Notes | Something of the magic in our perception of the world is lost in all this technology, as convenient as it and practical as it all is. We lose our faith in God to get through the storms, we lose our sense of the magical and mysterious in the universe. When everything is explained, the excitement is gone. And since we were born into all this media exposure, we don't even realize it. It's our natural environment, so to speak. I know it's great to be able to understand what's happening in the world, but somehow I wish sometimes we lived in those days when the weather was explained by Thor and his magical hammer. estory |
By estory
| Author Notes | Something of the experience of real life, of the fresh air, the smell of hot dogs and beer, the murmurs of the crowd, the crack of the bat, gets lost on television. I've watched many ball games on television, even listened to them on the radio, and there is a certain poetry to the play by play there, but it doesn't compare to sitting in Yankee Stadium on a summer's evening, as the sun sinks behind the skyline of the city that never sleeps. The electric jolt of feeling the crowd leap to its feet at the prospect of a game winning walk off home run in the bottom of the ninth. We can peer into the window through technology, we can eavesdrop on the action, but somehow it just isn't the same experience. estory |
By estory
| Author Notes | I wanted to keep a mechanical rhythm to underscore my theme here, my subject matter. I wanted a feeling of the narrator being isolated, and totally in the grip of 'the machine.' And I wanted to keep the identity of that machine ambiguous, which, in many ways, it really is to us in the world today. There is an eeriness to living with all this technology. estory |
By estory
| Author Notes | We don't often realize what a barrage media and social media has become and how it is all pervasive and how it shapes so much of our opinions on so many issues. And we don't think about who is behind the media and social media and what their agenda is. I tried to create a sense of a robotic voice here, something preprogrammed, and also ambiguous, hiding the motives of the ones behind that voice. I hope I was successful in getting across this sense of media and getting people to think. A few more posts and this collection will at last be done. It took a couple of years to post since so much of my time last year was spent taking care of my dad in the last months of his life. I am looking forward to posting the next collection. A breath of fresh air. estory |
By estory
| Author Notes | I wanted to demonstrate in a few little scenes how those who control the media can shape public opinion simply through the stories and images they air on the media. It may not have much to do with reality or real life. But it is the real life in our collective consciousness. Again this is in a spare, spartan style, machine like and dead panned to underscore the theme. estory |
By estory
| Author Notes | This piece really hearkens back to a style I used in Patterns, my second collection of poetry, and the minimalistic, repetitive phrasing with gradual evolutions that seems to evoke this machine like, mechanized pattern of life we are in today. I wanted this to be eerie, in the mode of Fahrenheit 451 or 1984. I wanted to create a feeling of having that machine over your shoulder, listening to what you say, watching what you write on the internet. Technology might seem like a miracle, but there is a sinister side to it. Like the old man at the end of Akira Kurasawa's brilliant movie, Dreams, I want to tell people to go back to nature, because the works of the hands of man are corrupt and have side effects. Thought provoking, I hope. One more poem to post in this collection, in two parts, and it is done at last. I am ready to move on. estory |
By estory
| Author Notes | The older I get and the more I watch technology take over the world, the more I am coming to the conclusion that just because these companies figure out a way to save themselves money and make money off of people, it's not necessarily a good for society. Pretty soon, if we let them take this to its logical conclusion, all we are going to interact with are machines. We weren't designed to interact with machines. Machines are lifeless, soulless creations and they are building a lifeless, soulless world around us. No wonder people are so lonely and unsatisfied today. The companies would have us believe that if you just get the new cellphone, the new app, the new internet service, your life will improve and you will live happily ever after. I think in reality they are just making the world more expensive and more complicated and more and more of an empty experience. We would be better off and with no pollution and any side effects from all this technology if we went back to the simpler times of the nineteenth century. Sure it was more work. That's another thing you were made for, and in working for the common good, you get satisfaction in life. Well that's my rant for the day, I guess, and in the end, I hope I get people thinking. estory |
By estory
| Author Notes | Well, at long last, this is the conclusion of Artificial Intelligence. I wanted to end on a note of some hope, some sense of freedom, of cutting the cord and going back to the simplicity and raw emotion, the excitement of the shared experience, in person. I tried to move the style from the mechanical to a more free form rhythm, and take the images from boxes and lines and dots to more sketched out figures and faces sitting together around that fire, listening to sounds of nature around them. I am glad to be done with this collection, it took a long time to post, and I am ready for new things. Stay tuned for a final short story to be added to the collection I have been posting during the year, it will be called The Conductor. As always, I await your comments...estory |
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