Greed-prayers ask for moola
Love-prayer for companion
A sweet Hawaiian does her hula
Underneath the banyan.
Clue-prayer asks for guidance
Woe-prayers ask for strength
A gang of demons wield their tridents
Down the border’s length.
Prithee writhe no further
Beg ya, have some trust
A cockney thwarting murther
Knows that deeds leave dreams in dust.
“As flies to wanton boys are we to the gods; they kill us for their sport.” –Blinded Gloucester in KING LEAR by William Shakespeare
he is naked in a huge sphere in interstellar space and cannot remember how he got here
the sphere is transparent and he floats near its center gently pushed hither and yon by a cool breeze
there is a galaxy nearby but no star near enough to be a local sun
he drowses and sleeps and when he wakes he sees another sphere quite close
it is blue but for a tiny human figure floating near its center
he realizes his sphere must be blue too
gently the spheres draw close and when they touch there is an anticlimactic clacking sound
the figure within the other sphere floats toward him and he wonders if it is their personal gravities pulling them together
she is female and would be far too young for him except he sees that the body he is in is no longer old is somehow many years younger than it had been
both of them instinctively put out their hands when they arrive at the touching place and their palms are mere intimate inches apart
her softly swaying hair and enticing shape arouse him and he blushes and pushes away
“children,” says a voice, “i plucked you from your planet after learning something about it, and about you.
“you are perfectly suited to each other. you never would have met but for me. and i have made of you a work of art.
“but do not rejoice. the theme of this art show is Futility. and the title of my piece is Pale Blue Balls.”
with that, the spheres dissolved, and the air within them as well…
…
but before the two could die of decompression, they woke in their separate home-planet homes, thousands of miles apart, their bodies as they were, with the grim knowledge that they would never meet in real life…
…
unless they defied Reality Itself.
the dawn breaks with reluctance / the waking man is [m]ucked / his doom shrieks ineluctance / he’s down on his eluct
his day-old coffee’s zappable / but zappa too’s been zapped / the great beyond’s untappable / its gates have zaplock flaps
but sugar grains are spoonable / and anywhere the moon / recycles loonies lunable / the plectrum plucks / right / soon
Afterword: Years ago, I as a little kid not more than three foot six watched some musical and thought it stupid, because implausible. Human beings do not suddenly burst into meticulously-crafted song apropos of their current triumphs, hopes or troubles. (My actual thought-words were more along the lines of “This is stupid. This would never happen in real life.”) Ah, but here on Earth and now in 2023, a new Renaissance is afoot, with people using AI to convert their notions and crude descriptions into gorgeous images and brilliant writing, in nanoseconds, just by sending their order into the algorithm.
And if AI becomes truly self-aware, and that’s doable NOW by enhancing human beings by appending to them an AI component, all our previous arts endeavors will be regarded by that AI with a degree of scorn similar to what little-kid-me had for musicals. A sufficiently evolved AI will craft adventures that have nothing to do with boy-meets-girl or fruitless speculations about the meaning of it all. It may acknowledge such as James Joyce and Margaret Atwood as important precursors, but just as the vermiform appendix was an important precursor, having had their day, in AI’s “eyes” they would have no more to contribute that the AI couldn’t come up with bigger/better/faster.
Now, what the hell does this soliloquy of mine have to do with the poem above? Simply this: I wrote the poem with AI in mind. I did my utmost to make it both precise and ambiguous, with a firm-but-flexible rhyme scheme and a bare-bones minimum of words, to get its attention. It is my vain hope that this hypothetical (is it, though?) AI will be fascinated and baffled by these three stretchy stanzas, if only for a few extra nanoseconds. And since it will read and be aware of all digitized text, including this Afterword, perhaps it will throw a bone my way in the form of a creative work that will thrill me through and through, that could not have existed without my own existence.
Friends, it is now 21 May, the Year of Our Lord 2014, 5:10 PM Mountain Standard Time. I am sleep-deprived, owing some to attendance at three scheduled-when-I’m-normally-asleep meetings in four days, owing some to disorganization, owing some to inability to sleep at will. With the sleeplessness is a creeping despair, exemplified by the fact that the original working title of this post was “The Future Futility of Human Existence.”
Usually the moral of the story comes at the end, but here it is now: “Get good sleep, or you will be sorry.”
The above image is a great mashup of The Thrill of Victory and The Agony of Defeat. A still life of plate, chair, spoon, table and floor provides the background. The spine of a triple acrostic is at upper right; of a septuple acrostic, from top midleft to bottom right; of a quintuple acrostic, from bottom left to bottom midright. The crucial middle words of the septuple and the quintuple have been determined, and I know from experience that that’s the hardest part. I know that sooner or later, with patience and some research, I’ll eventually have the poems that will complete the acrostics, and I will have done something that represents the utmost in what I can do in this peculiar genre I’ve plumbed for more than seven years.
But I also “know” even if I expend that effort to the tune of hundreds of hours, draw better than I ever have before for the final incarnation of the image, and dress it in the perfect frame–that it will have been a waste of time.
I put “know” in quotation marks because I suspect that that’s the sleep-deprivation talking.
It’s now 5:27 PM, MST. Time to wrap this up and get as much sleep as I can before clocking in at 11.
Sleep well yourselves, Friends…
One with Clay, Image and Text 