First Foray Into a Strange Future

First Foray Into a Strange Future

     David Angel 

Feeling like a relic
A remnant of the past
Inquiry, ChatGPT, 
How do you write so fast?

“Huge language data base
Pattern recognition 
Assembling and combining 
A billion token word uses”

How do you write a poem?
It walked me through one step-by-step 
Invited me to work with it 
Compose in tandem with the Chat 

Said what the Hell, no going back
AI is here to stay
Before it kills off humankind 
Along, I’m going to play

The first prompt was for subject
The second was for form
I chose to write about a dream
Something cozy, nice and warm

Free verse was my chosen style
AI offered the first line 
In sleep the whole world folds
A simile about a paper swan

Asked ME to write the next line
No strict rules, meter or rhyme
Suggested where free verse might go 
Presented options, rain or shine

I typed in a second line 
AI said it was sublime!
The compliment felt good 
Even though I understood

Machine praise isn’t real
Computer shuck and jive 
Still, I liked the spiel 
Somehow, the damn thing felt so real

Artificiality
Mimics human beings
The pitch to our emotions
Machines learn in a cyberdream

AI gave me sample lines
Decided not to read them
The poem, I would make mine
After the first line

Line one set the tone
A folding paper swan
Imagery, mood, subject 
Now time to move on

Line two added texture 
A visual suggestion 
Hunger as a metaphor 
Return of mother swan

Sustenance for little one
On we travelled, prompt by prompt
Concepts proffered for each line
I wrote them out in time

No idea 
if it’s good
I doubt it, 
but I’ll knock on wood:

In sleep the whole world folds away, like a paper swan
A hungry dozing cygnet waits, for return of mom
The dream of taste, the taste of dreams, merge so interchangeably 
A kuala bear is nibbling leaves, from a eucalyptus tree 

Hurry mama I am fearful
Don’t know if he’s a herbivore
I try to dream the bear to sleep
Prayers sent up to Aphrodite

Swoop down with your chariot
I blinked and clamped my eyes shut, saw
The kuala bear was dreaming me
He woke up and I took my leave

Copyright ©️ 2025, David Angel, All Rights Reserved  

CiciNote - 

You know, a koala is not a bear, it is a marsupial, and your baby swan must be from eastern Australia because that’s the only place outside of a zoo that you’re going to find a koala.

Angel - 

It’s a dream, Ci!

Cici - 

Oh yeah. Well - you sure have a lot of rhymes in there for supposed free verse 

Angel - 

No rule against it. That’s the beauty of the form

PoetNote -

Writing a poem using AI prompts was fun! The actual collaborative effort was done too quickly to have any chance of being any good, so I played with it until the enhanced version above appeared. The first line I’ll just consider a prompt and if you like it, the poem is all mine.

The original collaboration appears in the picture below.

Try it sometime. It wasn't as scary as I feared, and I may have even learned something!