I bought this glass house
thinking exposure would bring connection.
In this curtainless cube
the traffic outside my window
is much like a flock of birds
feeding on the view, but never
knocking on the door to deliver a voice.
Surely a doll in a box will at least
bring the curious, perhaps a single person
who would want to know if there is
human flesh on the arm that waves,
but GPS doesn’t allow veering
from programmed directions.
Is time still real? Is it selfish
to feel broken enough to cry,
or wish for a pen so I could
imagine myself through poetry?
I’ve lived long enough to reach
the future…It’s so much colder since
caring about one another became obsolete.
©Susie Clevenger 2025
“The question is not whether intelligent
machines can have any emotions,
but whether machines can be intelligent without any emotions.”
—Marvin Minsky, 1986
I hear you, Susie. These are cold days indeed, yet our poets' hearts are still aflame, and sometimes our poems are all we know of how to make it through.
ReplyDeleteWOW. Especially those last two stanzas. Tell it, girl.
ReplyDeleteAnyone who's strived to stay human in this quacksalver box of bytes hits all of these virtual wals and wonders if it's possible. Even remembering the human requires neurons that have been disrupted by machine intelligence. Now watch the massive vanishing occur right before our eyes, now and how.
ReplyDeleteReally thought provoking. I wonder, too, sometimes if time is still real....oftentimes it seems very unreal to me. And you are definitely right on when you say that caring for one another seems (in some circles) obsolete!
ReplyDeleteLiving in "a birdhouse" --- what a thought-provoking image, something that's not digitalized but a great metaphor for the digital age where people flock and scatter, together and apart,
ReplyDelete"like a flock of birds
feeding on the view, but never
knocking on the door to deliver a voice." But your poetry does deliver your voice, and how. When we read your words, we feel you there and care. The future's not so cold if we can still gather around each other in this way.
“Is time still real?” I sure hope not!
ReplyDeleteStunning, Susie! Such clever insights weaved in and out of this, what feels like, a very particular hell. That whole image of being within a curtain less cube and no one coming to deliver a voice is just wow.
ReplyDeleteAnd that last stanza is just on-the-nose brilliant:
"I’ve lived long enough to reach
the future…It’s so much colder since
caring about one another became obsolete."
This is so, so good. You drew me right in with that stunning first couplet and just kept going.
ReplyDelete