Auto Semiotic Asphyxiation

 

I’m frightened

Like a banana

Looking at a Twix

“What’s this?”

A banana

Afraid that its sleek yellow curves won’t be enough

Not against this golden beast

Afraid that the precise, firm, concave sweep of its fruity surface

Will fail to entice

When opposed to the sugar rush immediacy 

Of not one

But two

Caramel biscuits

God damn that Twix!

I’m scared

Like a dinosaur

Looking up to see a meteor

That’s going to throw the ground into the sky

I’m apprehensive

Like it’s 1999

And I’ve just registered a website

For my business selling fax machines

I’m worried

Like the town crier announcing the birth

Of the printing press

What’s happening is this:

I’m typing a poem

And the software predicts 

The next word

Correctly

How can artificial intelligence know who a poet thinks?

If it can, how long before my kind become…

No. I wasn’t going to type ‘extinct’. 

Maybe I wasn’t going to rhyme at all

You don’t know me

You system

You machine

You don’t feel 

You don’t desire

You don’t dream

But I confess

If the words I choose are something a computer can guess

Maybe I’m not the wild eccentric I imagine in my head

If a plastic intelligence can pre-empt my so called eloquence

Then it’s me that needs to change

I’ve got stuck in this here lane

And actually, this is brilliant, I reckon

I should thank the simulation for bringing this to my attention 

I have to try harder

To be a smarter banana

This diplodocus is going to survive the encroaching disaster

I’ll defeat you, you Twix, 

Yeah, you in your wrapper

All tempting and dapper

Don’t feel bad, you meteor

You’re nothing but a metaphor

For the death of art brought about

Not by technology

But by metaphysical complacency

And a slavish adherence to the form of poetry over its

True, joyful purpose

Which is to disrupt and be improbable

Let me go back to the beginning of this parable

And stick things in you won’t auto predict

Banana skins to make you slip

Dinosaurs to make me smile

Fax machines, because half my audience won’t get the joke

Town criers because I’ll keep calling out, 

Proclaim the news in the town square

A thing of beauty makes no sense

You can’t predict it

Only know it

When you see it standing there

Like a banana