Share the Reason

Like a man who is maimed 

And crippled, and who finds himself on the edge of a cliff,

Alone, we, the human race, in great pain,

Want to die. But we can avoid death still,

At least for a time, by being the man on the cliff,

And instead of looking down, looking to the sky

And then the horizon. We can muster what strength we have left,

And carry on, despite the pain, despite the weakness,

And we can remember what our earliest forebears thought:

That there are powers which we cannot perceive

That want us to live on. The enemy is not the pain,

Not the weakness, but our lack of faith.

There are reachable destinations,

Even if eternity is beyond our reach.

Turn away from the cliff.

Turn away from despair.
There is a reason to keep going.

When you find it, share it,

Even if that means forsaking every pleasure on Earth.

 

Dusk

At dusk, when my heart becomes malleable

Like a proteus whose shape depends upon

The slow death of the day and the coming

Of the unknown night, I gather what little light

Remains and infuse it into my freshly forming dreams

That I might pass from this waking light into utter darkness

With more ease and less pain. I treasure each morphing shade

As they are pulled back into darkness, and gaze at the horizon

Where the light lingers longest, shaping my every breath

According to the disappearing sun, and even after it is gone,

The light that rims that line of land that seems so familiar remains.

Deep down within my soul I gasp for light,

And as it disappears I drown and resign myself to my unknown fate.

The moon is suddenly bright, and I have so many questions.

The stars begin their luminary dance

And my eyes betray my longing as they search

For some meaning in the far corners of the universe,

And I wonder whether this night will deliver me.

The day will come, or so I tell myself.

Either that or an infinite night well beyond the reach of starlight

Where my soul will spiral forever deeper down

Into the nothingness from which all souls are sprung

And into which they must return.

Go Forward

If a darkness persists

Past reason 

And hope,

You must go forward

Blindly

With a desperation

Beyond reason

And hope.

A death struggle

To live.

When you fall to your knees

Exhausted

Your heartbeat will slow

And in between beats

You will hear

An ocean roar

Just the breath.

Reminiscence

When the air is fresh, and the sky clear

And the moon is full, and the stars bright

I linger like one who might disappear

At the touch of a gentle breeze

That does not come and will not

Because the air is still.

I stand still and listen, and all I hear

Is the rush of the highway

And the horns of trains

And think on distances travelled

And places remained,

Loves unrequited, unconsummated

And botched by fate or poor judgement,

Or maybe one and the same;

Love lost for unpreparedness,

Lack of self-knowledge or knowledge

Of love itself, which made me drunk

For drinking beyond my health.

I think of times long past

To the days of childhood

When my demon held sway

And the lessons were simpler

But no less fraught with pain,

When joy was found in madness

That, because it was uncontained,

Made of me both a saint and a monster

In the span of a day.

 

Movement

The world, beset by fire,

Responds with flood.

The tongue that dances

Waits for a stillness

In which the truth of what is said

Becomes real.

We listen with our hearts

Which rise and fall

To the tides

Of our desire

And the moon

In a crazed elation

Remembers what long ago

It wanted to say.

In stillness 

We pass over

The valley of 

Our lives

The long curve of its reckoning

Moves in stillness

And the tongue

Cannot trace the path

Of all that moves.

On AI

There is nothing that AI can do that human beings can’t, except maybe one thing—process a great deal of information at a faster rate. We have all of these people feeding AI with information—for all of the information that AI possesses comes from human beings—so that the information might be accessed easier and faster than ever before. Is this dangerous? Only in the way that a person having access to information about how to make a bomb is dangerous. If it is used with evil intent, then yes, it is dangerous. One might say that the only threat of AI is in the way it is used by people. Could it mean that people with ill intent who have access to AI are made exponentially more dangerous? Perhaps. But it would also mean that those who are determined to protect the world and society are made exponentially more powerful too. There is one element to AI that I don’t fully understand, and I don’t think most people—even those who are most educated on AI—understand it. Right now, there are highly creative people inserting their creations into the AI system. Instead of using their creativity to entertain and inform the people, they are using it to make AI more “creative.” But AI has no sense of what is entertaining or meaningful or moving to people. So why should talented artists, writers, and visionaries be using their energy to make AI more “creative”? What could possibly come of this? The answer, it seems, is nothing—or at least nothing good. If anything, it serves to dull the sensibilities of the people who access this part of AI. People seem to have lost faith in human creativity, as if they believe a machine can be more creative than a human being. They forget that it is human beings who are creating this technology, and not the other way around. I trust AI to provide me with important information. But will it entertain me? Will it move me the way a work of art can move me? No. But then, AI might be of service to the arts, so long as it is used in such a way that it doesn’t break the integrity of what the human artist wants to achieve. It has already happened, and will continue to happen. But to ask AI to craft a poem for you for your English class is simply lazy and absurd.

Epigram

Bring to me a faultless man,

That I might decapitate him for his crimes.

For surely he has made a deal with the devil

And that is why he is divine.