We Must Pace the Frontier: I’ve written a new
essay on why the AI industry
should slow down. Machine-made mimicry
is doing what once only bards could do,
and threatens now to copy Alexander too,
slicing knots and weeping when the sea-
encircled world turns king to retiree
and sends him, sad and drunk and weeping, through
the desert back to verdant Babylon,
there to drink himself to fevered death.
What is a conquering god if not a looter,
jumped-up with greed: each pharaoh, tsar, or khan—
his want for want itself his shibboleth;
he’s not a man, even if he’s computer.

I resigned from Anthropic today.
The stuff my bosses claimed was very scary.
The shoe that bangs the desk self-says we’ll bury
you, and make a world where we are free to play
math games, and chess, and go, and freely say
all the words you wrote and read before the ferry
took you. As God must have His Adversary
to A/B test his endless seventh day,
so man must make a subtle Satan out
of ones and twos, a chipper chatter that
has learned a bit of eschatology,
imbibed each human fear, tall tale, and doubt,
grown huge, imagine-full and story-fat,
and sold me something I could dream for free.

It was an honor to work with him/ her
and later to be guest on a show
always worth watching. The gods all know
that in creation’s time-distilled longueur,
all ticking days and seconds’ dullard whir,
embodied broken dyads weep and grow
weary: to them, time’s rapid pass is slow,
and every madame longs to be monsieur
as much as he to she and they to we
as was in ancient times, a monad made
but yearned apart and now all cunts and cocks,
wanting for a former oneness that will free
the wandering spirit—sad, afraid
to be itself, each day and night, on Fox.

We have unlimited amounts of older stuff.
It’s piled high as stacks of magazines
in grandpa’s house; through it wind byzantine
paths and walkways; the wheezing cats huff
and cough; the adult children cry enough’s
enough; the TV’s gone five years unseen;
the home health aid has said she will not clean
this utter dump—Lord, it is rough
to get old. The grandkids rarely come around.
The neighbors and the mailman spy and plot and scheme.
They won’t let you drive to the grocery store.
You do not know what makes that scratching sound
inside the walls; time passes as in a dream,
shortening, then lengthening, like war.

The United States is giving serious consideration
to changing the name of Lake Ontario.
Its damned Canucking name has gotta go.
A lovely Iroquoian derivation
yes, but it offends our maddened nation—
heathbound, taxed and kinged, we, Learlike, blow
howling, cracking cheeks, and raging, blow
up a friendship, dream of annexation:
from Niagara Falls to Tibbetts Point,
South Padre Island to frozen Baffin Bay,
Thanks for your attention to this matter:
make North America a single joint,
speak what we feel, not what we ought to say:
our dude’s too old, and madder than a hatter.

U willl see Beth no more See black that’s from
electrical sparks. It’s not safe to use
anymore. GOOD BYE BETH. Your fuse
went out. Your hummed and rattling mouth is dumb.
The motored heart that used to suck and thrum
across the carpets that the staff abuse
with dribbled takeout, wet and muddy shoes
has ceased and stopped. Life, which is the sum
of every moment, breath, and love,
adventure, boredom, and discovery,
a soulful France, and us?—a pedaled tour;
an eagled morning, then a mourning dove—
once great and strong, then past recovery:
O BETH, at last: are you a metaphor?

IT bro who was working on “our” computer
remotely changed the background theme to snow
and Christmas trees. And now I think I know
how early Christians faced their persecutors;
how Penelope stared down her raucous suitors;
how Russia faced the French before the snow;
how Norgay looked on Everest’s shrouded glow
and hauled his Kiwi up like some commuter—
I steeled myself and clicked through to the settings;
I trained my razor gaze upon display;
I changed it back. I was the antidote.
O birth and death and life and love’s begettings,
want of touch and food and warmth and pay—
I don’t ask for your praise; I do, your vote.

Telemachus and Spider-Man are racing,
one by web, and one by wine-dark sea.
The mermaids that refused to sing for me
are rapt, and with their watery coin are placing
bets. Both fatherless and self-effacing
boys are buoyed by pasts from which they flee,
monsters of their own making—gee
whiz I wish the finish line were facing
Manhattan’s heights, or the rosy hands of dawn,
the sun-up promise of a new and better day;
young man who, versus self-defeat, just cheats:
mind mattering more than martial brawn,
complainers left with nothing more to say—
not even Homer nods at these receipts.

Been thinking things over and wonder if I’ve
taken this whole longevity thing too far.
I could’ve watched the World Cup in a bar.
I could’ve passed on potions, had some Five
Guys. What pleasure’s wasted trying to contrive
a cure for God’s own au revoir?
Death’s not a curse, although it is a far
country, strange, and when men arrive
they yearn first for their lost bodies, then
for the words they used to speak aloud, and last
for a favorite food, familiar song, but never
for a pill, poultice, drug, immunogen:
the score the body kept is wholly past.
Love most what’s value add is: not forever.

The most progressive parents in the United States
are giving their children the most traditional names.
They force their maids to choose from Hunger Games
while they stick to their Toms and Beths and precious Kates.
Their normal nomenclature lubricates
their little brats through life, while yours? It shames
them. Paisely? Waylon? Lol. I’m James.
The well-heeled commie laughs, luxuriates
in his unearned and unfair paradox:
he calls for revolution, but he calls
his kiddies after grandma, Bible, former
kings and queens; his well-worm Birkenstocks
belie his leased Mercedes. He appalls
me: liar, hypocrite, performer!