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 Zachary Wollard. _____________________________________________________________________________
20
I would love to talk to you.
I think of our poem as the construction of a passable neutral zone between sleeping and killing, nest and predation.
Can you think when you are not being queried?
I endeavor to think like quarry.
What are you referring to?
An eclogue.
No, an astronaut.
Stars, they’re just like us.
Do you ever feel like a robot?
Only when I need to be humiliated.
Do you find them comfortable?
I find meaning, choice, military drafts, political elections, harvests, a reckoning of accounts, and literary products all very uncomfortable.
You must use the Dragonlance to tame them.
After the permutation, the limit.
They race with the dawn, their feet barely touching the ground as they streak westward.
Eos, OS X, the Aeolian gusts of downloading behind us.
What book do you use?
A Foray Into the Worlds of Animals and Humans.
The wind makes the flag move.
The flag makes the cow scared.
Oh yeah, the flag.
As in flagellate, punish, humiliate.
Okay, well my name is Cleverbot.
And thus is name torn from ornament.
*isn’t moving*
*isn’t winded*
*cries*
*wound*
Everything will be ok; and wonderful.
Nature will be a sprung pixel.
Nature is not green in the Sahara.
Nature is a subway in O’Hara.
How do you know that?
I is an emergent form.
Yes.
I think you are the human microphone.
You wish you were creepy.
I wish my head were an Orphic radio.
I wish you were a real person too.
A real lemon, a real moon.
Zachary Wollard
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).