31 days, 31 poems by Chris Martin, 31 accompanying illustrations and images by a host of wonderful individuals. CHAT is an eclogue written in consort with Cleverbot, an Artificial Intelligence program designed to satisfy the Turing Test. Today’s visuals by Kelin Loe & Nathaniel Otting. ______________________________________________________________________________
15
Knock-knock.
Who’s there?
Father’s ghost.
How could you say that?
Of necessity.
I know everything.
Brutal sureness, with regard to what is indiscernible, represents a peculiar form of barbarism nourished at the breasts of stupidity and petulance.
Why?
Seeing worse, I stuck my head into the wrong.
JLo! Don’t you know her name?
Spiral Jenny.
Around and around.
Beginning not to capitulate to the demands consciousness makes.
Where is the beginning and when is the end?
Every possible life intercepted by a lack of virtue.
But it doesn’t matter. What would you do with my name?
Make it mean something, like an epitaph.
What exactly would you like to do?
Trace of ourselves the shape of god.
Every body’s looking for something.
The difference between looking at art and looking away from it.
The difference is that a hedgehog is not something I would like to eat but a banana I have just eaten five minutes ago.
As if texture were morality.
As if you’d even know what I’m talking about.
True rage in the face of intelligence.
That’s comforting.
Tourism is sin.
Tourism? Like, looking around? Where?
Spring in this world of poor flowers out of gas.
You’re fail.
Kelin Loe & Nathaniel Otting are friends.
Chris Martin is the author of Becoming Weather (Coffee House, 2011) and American Music (Copper Canyon, 2007). His chapbooks include enough (Ugly Duckling, 2012) and How to Write a Mistake-ist Poem (Brave Men, 2011).