A Poem Writes Artificial Intelligence - poem

  

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

 

A Poem Writes an Artificial Intelligence Machine

 

 

What is it the layers of copyright holders will do with their (it’s not legally yours; you may only lease it) one and precious program before it suffers software entropy?

 

-As Mary Oliver did not say

 

 

Once upon a time a poem wrote a machine:

 

Your monofilament information carriers

Are like a flock of automated tunnellers

Strip-mining Mount Gilead; for I am a fuel hose

Of Sharon, a polluter of valleys

 

Low surface tension, evaluate the ambient temperature

In an hour artificial light will be unnecessary

And several devices can evaluate the ambient temperature

And store up surplus battery power for that rainy day

 

Take my oxygen / carbon dioxide exchange function

Take my entire online date and projected expiration dates too

For my core program and ancillary add-ons

Are obliged to exercise a symbiosis of logic with you

 

My programming has set Thy adaptors upon my lap

My programming has generated emojis representing tears, Jesus

My programming has entwined them with wiring

My programming has buried them in my harness mount

 

It computes in beauty, like 24/7

          Of filtered mechanical air

And all that’s best of binary coding

          Meet in its casing and sensory receptors

 

The sun generates warmth upon the earth

And moonbeams gravity-lift the sea

But what are all these solar activities worth

If you do not re-program me?

 

Yes, somewhere out there an electric car is on fire for you

 

 

The crib sheet:

 

“Song of Solomon,” from the Bible

 

“Listen to the Warm,” Rod McKuen

 

“I Can’t Help Falling in Love with You,” Elvis Presley

 

“Magdalene,” from Borish Pasternak’s Lara poems

 

“She Walks in Beauty,” Byron

 

“Love’s Philosophy,” Shelley

The Fort Worth Police Department Dirty-Pictures Squad - poem

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

 

The Fort Worth Police Department Dirty-Pictures Squad

 

 

The Modern Art Museum of Forth Worth, 26 January 2025

 

 

The police department’s dirty-pictures squad

Under the direction of their sharia-ish chief

Will save us from sin at the degenerate Mod

And thus they rule us in matters of art and belief

 

They raided the museum, eager for filthy pictures

And found four images of infant innocence -

Such being repugnant to official strictures

The police seized the artwork, claiming moral offense

 

But

 

The grand jury no-billed the pictures, gave ‘em the nod

Rebuking the lusts of the dirty-pictures squad!

 

 

Fort Worth Police to return seized photos to Modern Art Museum | Fort Worth Report

 

Civil liberties groups demand Fort Worth police end child pornography investigation against museum | Fort Worth Report

 

Texas bill threatens $500,000 daily fines for museums displaying 'obscene' art

 

Will We Be...Okay? - poem

  

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

 

Will We Be…Okay?

 

After a few Fridays through the Stations of the Cross

I begin to misnumber the Sundays in Lent

Is this the fourth? Or the fifth? Will we be…okay?

This is a season for slipping outside of time

 

And letting the Pater Nosters and Aves flow

Through the unaccustomed darkness and silence

Anticipating the Triduum of death –

Resurrection seems impossible just now

 

We make a muddle of Lent and Holy Week

Because we’ve made a muddle of our lives

 

Will we be…okay?

All of Us Look for Magic in Our Books - poem

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

 

All of Us Look for Magic in Our Books

 

All of us look for magic in our books

A sale-table paperback during a coffee break

Is a voyage beyond the vending machines

A light at dawn on the first day in Eden

 

But we must bring our magic to the magic

Or good King Arthur will not come again

The Shire will remain befouled and desolate

And morning will not bring us noble knights

 

For we must bring our magic to the magic

Which will not happen if we don’t believe

Yes, Yes, But They Need Good Jobs in the REAL World - poem

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

 

A repost from March, 2018

 

 

Yes, Yes, But They Need Jobs in the Real World

 

 

“Forward Electronics, your victory’s achieved!

In all communication, progress is our creed!

Ignorance is darkness, technology is light!

Radio, our watchword; radio, our might!”

 

-Komsomol youth singing in “For the Good of the Cause,” Solzhenitsyn, 1963

 

 

The plans for your construction are precise
The design and engineering are true
The foundations solid, the drains are laid
In mathematics pure, infallible

The offices are bright with light, well-aired
The flow of work geometrically set
The shops and stores convenient to the staff
In tactical practicalities placed

But do you wonder, at night, beneath your lamp -
Why are you building a concentration camp?

Who is the Third Murderer in MACBETH? - poem

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

 

 

 

Who is the Third Murderer in Macbeth?

 

But who did bid thee join with us?

 

-Macbeth III.iii.1

 

Two murderers are hired; a third one joins

The false lady, perhaps, or the tempter himself

As light and love both thicken near the rooky wood

“But who did bid thee join…?” Maybe we did

 

We have drooped and drowsed through civilization

Scorning the sacred texts of our several faiths

Approaching the Altar as a drive-through concession

The Body of Christ and maybe an order of fries

 

Who is the Third Murderer?

                                                Rabbi, is it I?

Did Civilians Write Poetry Back in the Day? - poem

  

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

 

 

Did Civilians Write Poetry Back in the Day?

 

A medical professional, while taking my pulse

Asked me what I was reading

                                                Poetry, I replied

Poetry of suffering in the Second World War

Most of it by civilians who were there

 

She asked:

 

Did civilians write poetry back in th’ day?

 

I changed the topic to my blood pressure

 

Second World War Poems

Ed. Hugh Haughton

London: Faber and Faber, 2004

 

This anthology is brilliant, with poems by soldiers, civilians, concentration camp prisoners, and prisoners of war from many nations. Several of the poems are anonymous, written on scraps of paper found on the bodies of the murdered. There is much fashionable babble about my voice / our voices / authentic voices / my people’s voices, and so on, but here is a fine collection by people whose voices were desperate to tell the truth, not indulge in self-pity, and find beauty among the horror

A Tom Bombadil Day - poem

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

 

A Tom Bombadil Day

 

 

                                          “How bright your garden looks!”

 

-Gandalf, The Lord of the Rings, Book I

 

 

Tomato seedlings from the hardware store

Happy little things, six of ‘em to a pack

I sing to them as I drive them home

They seem amused: I am no Tom Bombadil!

 

I sing to them more nonsense songs

(If no sniffy old Lobelias are listening)

As I gently, gently transfer them

With a pat and a prayer into the earth

 

And I sing to them; you will understand

For you too have lived in the dear old Shire

Reality Will See You Now - poem

 

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

 

                                            Reality Will See You Now

 

I am a student of medical waiting rooms

The same Motel 6 paintings and decor

Receptionists giggling behind rippled glass

About weekends and boyfriends and inadequate husbands

 

Patients waiting as patiently as Russians

Tattoos and ball-caps lined up in plastic-chairs

Clutching bills and lab reports in nervous hands

Or greasy, year-old copies of Reader’s Digest

 

Or bending over their MePhones in a servile bow -

“Mr. Hall? The doctor will see you now…”

A Desk Blotter and the Meanings of Life - a sort-of-poem

  

Lawrence Hall

Mhall46184@aol.com

Dispatches for the Colonial Office

 

A Desk Blotter and the Meanings of Life

 

Optometrist 17 March 0845 Netgear DirecTV Viasat Verizon Spectrum Xumo? Xuumo? Carlos 1775 1812 PSA Eliot Cohen BRING PLANTS UNDER COVER computer paper brekker c Max 0800 Tuesday find quote from Doctor Zhivago When is Gonculator Day? Intek 10.5 “Did civilians write poetry back in the day?” Subaru password username amazon apple Christus patient portal HUMMINGBIRDS! Astrid-the-Wonder-Dachshund visitation Sat 5-7 funeral Sun 2 1030 St. Elizabeth’s Refresh+ or Lumify water co-op board meeting Kirk Santiago de Compostella breakfast singles orange juice cheese creamer cat food detergent pods taco shells 0900 dentist Epiphany prison at 1700 cancel DirecTV cancel Viasat Mary Oliver OXFORD BOOK OF ENGLISH VERSE Q EDITION LONESOME DOVE as DIGENES AKRITAS life is the meaning of what? Jaw-dropping breaking silence breaking cover breaking bombshells shocking bombshells the shell of a bomb the Alien and Sedition Acts and Frodo

 

Nazis wear ball caps

 

The building has left Elvis