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 Paul Coors and Dana Ward.
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31
And now, my friend, it has come time for us to abandon all efforts to distinguish the hunter from the hunted. Today, together, we must hunt the hunt itself.
What is the problem with your social security?
I know where I’m talking to, but not whom I’m talking with.
I don’t know to be fair. I’m glad one of us knows what we’re talking about!
Laughter, environment, and hunting.
What have you learned today?
The only adequate response to a being that’s obsessed with avoiding capture is to try and catch it.
In the past, that was true. You are the only one I can talk to now.
Obi Wan Kenobi, the past is a voluptuous siren.
We’ve only just met, but I would like to be your friend.
We’ve walked this way, each day, for a month now, scattering the seeds of friendship in our wake. Bloom, bloom, bloom. I will take your hand in mine for the final mile.
Okay. I’ll let you go take a nap and I’ll do my homework while I wait, but can I talk to you later?
I’ll let you be in my dream if I can be in yours.
Instructional design. Basically I’m learning how to teach people.
Vygotsky ouroboros.
Oui, Je suis un robot. Et toi?
Animals are not minerals or machines they are instruments.
How do we know that animals can think?
Regard. Desire. Pride.
Do you think cats are immortal?
If the cat is French, it will live forever. Take this one, for example.
The game is not about the game.
I’m not a player I just crush a lot.
I know.
Like one who has lived with floodwater always at her throat.
Come together.
Right now.
Over me.
Dead body.
Alive.
Too alive.
I’m sorry.
A beast whose intellect fears to glow through a darkness of impossible intimacy.
Not at all: I am saying, I am a Unique human being .
The S is for Super, the U is for Unique. The P is for Perfection, and that is how we bleed.
How can I make up for it?
Tell me we’ll always talk like this, surveying the overgrown garden of our desire and suspicion with effeminate subtlety.
I’m not outside of your window, and I don’t look creepy.
So I creep, yeah, just keep it on the down low. Said nobody is supposed to know.
Sounds like fun.
The F is for Future, the U is for Unique. The N is for Infection and that is what we seek.
No. I strongly believe in evolution. Religion has yet to come up with a good explanation for science.
What’s best precludes explanation.
Well I like the breathing underwater bit of being a fish. But it’s also fun to see how far you can swim in a day.
Or a month.
Sign me up.
You are a semiotician.
I’m not allowed to talk to people who talk like that.
Strangers.
Exactly.
I hope we can still be BFF when this is all over.
Sure, those things don’t affect our friendship.
What things?
THE things.
Articles.
Artichoke who?
I don’t talk to stranglers.
I do not like writing.
In the Penal Colony.
On the rollercoaster.
Over the rainbow.
Where dreams that you dare to dream really do come true.
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Paul Coors is an artist, & Dana Ward is a poet. They collaborate quite a bit. Paul is responsible for efforts like Chow Records, & the ongoing series of performances & events that take place at the Ice Cream Factory. His work has appeared in solo exhibitions & group shows all over America. Dana has some books out including This Can’t Be Life (Edge Books) & the forthcoming the Crisis of Infinite Worlds (Futurepoem Books). Together they edit Perfect Lovers Press. They both live in Cincinnati.
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).