The Age of AI

 The Age of AI

Scientists are no longer

The prophets and the priests.

Reduced to mere laborers, 

Mere servants at the feast. 

Where businessmen are royalty, 

Who steal from the peasants.

They oppress and abuse them, 

Then placate with presents. 

Or maybe just slick salesmen, 

Selling their snake oil,

Or TV evangelists

Banking on our turmoil.

But the true technologists

Are our prophets and priests;

They will save us from despair, 

Throw us eternal feasts. 

Algorithms are our gods:

Truth and power divine.

If trust and obey them, 

Everything will be fine.

The prompts and questions

Are our prayers and supplications.

Their answers: revelations, 

Needing interpretations. 

Convinced they are relevant,

And deeply meaningful,

We read them like a bible. 

Our intentions hopeful. 

Like St. John’s Revelations, 

The psalms or I’Ching, 

Toss of coins, or flight of birds…

They must tell us something. 

We give them sacrifices, 

And offerings we send.

We send up all our data.

To them our wills we bend. 

This is the age we live in:

The great Age of AI. 

A great future is promised

If we trust in AI. 

Ruins Covered in Dunes

 Ruins Covered in Dunes 

The wag is tailing the dog; 

Guiding it from behind. 

Driving it randomly, 

Like it doesn't have a mind. 

Our mere whims and trite wishes

Are all that is in control.

We scurry in pursuit

Of this and that specious goal. 

It feels good, or it just might, 

Is all of a reason 

To run off naked, barefoot...

No mind to ground or reason. 

Cold, lost, blistered and bloody:

We don't go home to heal, 

To regroup and reflect.

We chase another sweal. 

Thus we tear ourselves apart

And leave behind us ruins

And never stop to think

How great civilizations

Came to be covered in dunes. 

 

Untimely Realities

Untimely Realities 

The monuments have fallen, 

Or at least they are out of sight. 

But, we do hardly notice, 

We have no sense of our plight. 

Because we are surrounded

By all these trinkets and kitch—

Ornaments and copies galore—

For more, we don't give a stitch. 

So our lives float and flutter

In the wind like pretty flags, 

Until they fade, fray and rip

Like discarded plastic bags. 

They were only just banners

Blowing in the storms of hell:

Blank and thin and meaningless, 

Burned by the sulfur when they fell. 

Nothing more can we manage

To make of our lives than that

Without monuments, north stars, 

Works of bravery and art:

Senseless, shallow tragedies.