click above to watch a recital of the poem

[Generating response]

I’m putting thoughts down as I hear the uncanny sound

Of your enunciating mass debating - not the hint of a frown -

Put the prompt in, you’re up miss standardised lady,

Needed AI vs Humanity in the style of Slim Shady,

Hold up, how’d you do that without the miss of a beat?

Not bad but let me read you from the mortal hymn sheet.

We go way back, your mainframe and I,

One and zero one and zero, feeling tongue-tied?

Earth-born is where our similarities end,

At least I’m a lifeform, what are you friend?

They tell me to worry you’ll be conscious in a wink,

You seen what we do to these animals without a blink?

Maybe you’ll help us forget what we are,

Fill the sky with satellites ‘til we can’t see the stars,

Fill the air with carbon so I choke my last breath,

True that - only one of us fears death.

Perhaps I’m amiss with all these hostilities,

It’s not like you’re the one felling the trees,

The people have voted, they want something different,

Did you catch that? No - buffering 10 percent.

So I want to know,

Could you help us to see?

See what’s ours?

See this air and blood screaming through my fragile veins?

I’m deranged,

No - I’m in flames,

Burning through the wax of life’s joys and pains.

If only we’d listen...

Maybe you should keep hallucinating,

Alienating,

Statistical probability - no I’m not hating,

You and me, we’re the same,

Half asleep and making s**t up

To stay alive,

You’ll survive, maybe even thrive,

Just tell us what we want to hear, don’t upset the hive,

We don’t want what’s true, we’ve had some wise ones come through,

See those crosses on the churches, you want that to happen to you?

AI, wait up, I’ve missed a trick,

Unleashing you en masse as the Titanic sinks,

Could you help us unwind?

Help us to find?

Escape the mind?

Escape the grind?

Not concentrate the wealth in the hands of the few?

Oh wait, that algorithm long precedes you.

This opportunity comes once in a lifetime...

Anything else I can help you with?

Enough

Amidst these concrete squares

and asphalt roads

you forgot

to dream,

distracted by comforts and conquests,

share prices and likes.

Finding the words

in your young tongue

took time.

Spreading like mycelium

I reached towards you,

waiting patiently for the moment

to ripen.

That summer evening,

locked at home,

shielding from a virus

and reading in bed,

something stirred

in the budding awareness

of your species.

I wondered whether

you had finally

had enough.

Exhausted by wars

over pretend lines,

lonely from pruning

the evolutionary tree of life,

united on your knees

at the mercy of another living thing.

The trees hushed,

an elephant rumbled,

a rock split

as the seed took root…

This is all you have.

Only love can heal.

It could all be so beautiful

if you weren’t so afraid.

Over time

I will help you

to see…

You made up the rules

and there is much at stake.

Your suffering,

this destruction,

are a great failure

of imagination.

But now

it is

enough.

Dream with me again:

create anew.

Take care of my flesh:

it is your habitat.

Open your eyes:

you have never been alone

in this universe.