And now we are two, three, four, Five!

how is that possible...!?

"You are not five Mama!"

but we are... Look,

I'm five years mom

as much as you

are five year's Son

and all the world

is five

in your eyes

and mine,

seeing life through your light

...all is not linear Love

we travel in Time

each new experience

and every memory

we revisit

brings us back

to One

and still I maintain

having understood

only

what is meant by heel

underfoot or next to,

and the forgiveness

that entails, the loss, the gain

unburied from our roots

washed, and set to air

in light

as fingers of experience

wrap around

to squeeze

us

our food for the poor

traversing from the Americas

to Europe, Africa and Asia

then pressed upon

the world

and those who've tended our pain

with allergy to compulsion

have said, the botany of us

has a soul

a kin

on opening up

On every holiday or birthday, mine or others, I wish always it seems for the same thing, or at least, since maturing. I no longer want to cure the condition we all share.

You know, "Life," though there was a time that I would have said I wished for peace, thinking how it should be a cure-all for war, pestilence, disease, general stupidity, and related suffering.

Then I slowly, painfully recognized that I didn't want to live without fight.

I want to grapple with problems. I want to overcome challenges in faith and possibility, physically and emotionally.

And accordingly, I sign my greeting cards with that dual edged wish:

Here's to a Creative Year.

Yes, Madre, I am breathing-- Listen

the beauty of a thought in the hallow

of an Amaryllis blossom singing

caught me short, as if placing second

in some marathon operetta

second running, because I'm catching up

in Harmony all these years to the Melody above

Yes, Madre, I'm calling it a Life--

And I am, breathing low, in surrender

to the emotion that has me rooted still

at the pump, that which is pumping blood

for some unanticipated trip between

these hemispheres I call one, and precious

--heart, or brain, or the soul that twines

the pause of understanding, our silence

in the hum, that withhold, for which I'm living

--a seed planted amid the Pine Barren

Yes, Madre, in awe, I am breathing just a little

if faced

with trial

(I know)

you'd split,

at the side, draw me in

like Egyptian hieroglyph

above your heart

where our line

has crossed.

On the proposed battle between Artificial Intelligence vs. Authentic Stupidity, I like most everyone, take the side of Authentic Stupidity, and hurry to add that I too am working on it... and, in fact, I see computer generated art as still a human artifact.

The simplest description of this case, it seems, is in the visual realm.

Consider for a moment this progression: Primitive man drew with fingers in the sand; Cave men used pigmented mineral rocks on stone; and Artist materials changed to vellum, wood, or hemp, genuine hairbrushes, and oil paints for renaissance painters, onward; and then to plastics, for more modern art.

Degenerate one might speculate, seeing how man and creative force have become so far removed from bedrock. We've come a long way to the somewhat ironic return of a "digital" age, in which people now use their fingers to paint with virtual paintbrushes... and have neither paint, nor brush, nor canvas... only bits of code on glass or plexi.

(One might pause to reflect that we have reached as if a pinnacle of Realism, having seen everything as points of light. Pixels and illusion.)

That a person, or its ghost, that once was, can continue to generate artwork having provided the most recent creative technology with just a fragment of input is quite decadent. We have moved as if from laymen ever closer to godliness in our causal irresponsibility (*a creative oxymoron).

That is not, though, why I am vying on the side of Authentic Stupidity. I will always champion the weaker contingent, and it has to do with content, but not at all its creation. Everyone, or everything, if you prefer, creates. That is the Nature of our existence, its landscape. The Universe. That is not where the loss is. Or rather the fight worth having. Content is content.

What I'd like to point out is that Artificial Intelligence will never Appreciate.

Not with human fullness. I realize I am perhaps stupidly stating the obvious. AI will never look at a painting for pleasure; It will never touch a sculpture with its mind's eye; Or read a book with interest; Listen to a song to remember; Nor cry irrationally at a happy-ending-film. Computer generated images, words, music or videos, however, will continue to move us--emotionally--- but only for as long as we remain sensitive.

Whether that is Authentic Stupidity, or Authentic Intelligence, is another question.

Creativity, loved

bled, and bloody

left me,

autumnal winds

stretching out

my draft deafening door,

swinging low

with lament:

...you used us

like a drug,

and now

we're fully wasted...

useless body! and breath what

could have been made, cohesive

for consumptive ritual,

you slaughtered

and butchered--!

with Life seeping out

its shell casing, housing

this bullet, aimed falsely

in vigilance, of a second helping

...eating is nonsensical

...and sleep is a wake

for grieving demons,

their gnashing of teeth

foretold

in Revelations!

for those who long buried

with primitive spade and hatchet

the half-spent core, reactive

that which sprouted fevered

exponential saplings, of temptation

blotched green and gold and red...

fading to russet,

brittle and deadening...

an ache I'd hope to feel again

shedding this blanket of snow

Clarence walked nonchalantly downtown, nothing especial to do, and while humming a tune he espied a placard between entrances to indeterminate establishments. It read:

Love Shopping? …seeking person or persons to pose in store incognito. $12 per survey.

He didn’t, particularly, love shopping, but the poster intrigued him. Was it a social experiment? A zealous competitor trying to undermine its opposition? A fraud baiting naïve-innocents with a non-fatiguing lure? But then again what was twelve bucks nowadays? A drink and a sandwich, and nothing fancy. So, how many survey’s were they talking about? Doing exactly what? His mind took a cynical bend.

He dialed the number walking. Having already paused too long, he took the call from a distance. Defensively posturing, as others might have presumed-- making a connection-- that he had been, maybe, suckered in.

He expected an automated service.

“Hello, Abott Marketing. How may I help you?” said a polite yet sultry voice of unspecified age, young but mature, or mature but youthful-- very attentive.

Now he felt a reproachful goofiness, a grown man seeking a shopping spree, not worth a dozen singles. And yet:

“Uh, yes. I’m responding to the advert posted,” he said feigning great interest, animating his tone a little extra, unnecessarily.

“What is your location?” she enunciated charmingly. Was he detecting an accent? He couldn’t quite place it. He craned his neck out from the shadow doorway he’d ducked into to better read the street sign:

“Corner of First and Boulder.”

“One moment…” and abrupt silence swept into music.

He started imagining how the face or body might match or contrast the vocal. The elevator tune raised an image of Jane Harlow, then turned a bit more Latina from Rita Hayworth to Victoria Monet, and then she was suddenly an overbearing trench with gorilla arms and low drawn hat not quite in any traditional shape, drooping and uniform grey, barely covering steely grey eyes.

“Ya’ rang?” he growled in a low hoarse whisper.

The wire went dead.

“Yeah. The… woman had me... on hold… “ he hung up and fixed his lip, emotionless.

“Ya’d be waitin’ a long time, heh, heh?” the cavalier sniggered at the dummy.

He had been taken in, a robocall, after all; and this was strange “personal” service.

Just how far was this farce going to evolve?

He kept a poker face. It was well-tanned apeman’s turn to make a false move.

I look at these scars

and think, uncritically

live with love, or do without

none of these

were caused

by anyone

only by carrying on, and caring about

I stabbed myself with scissors when I was little

and have stitch-slashes across my middle

and at the temple a small, raised gash

looking in the mirror in confusion

as to which side it happened on,

Good or Evil?

I still have callous marks on the left

from flailing on the violin

and from squeezing the life

out of my pencil on the right

in pursuit of... I'm not sure what?

little pieces of hearts, always

to make whole again

maybe more fully loveable

maybe only to oneself

trying not to take anything

from anybody,

like it might be theft

I've refused everything,

even advice freely given

and I'd wish for all of us

a skin blameless, and smoothly healing

we don't see things,

we see these, being (s)

we see a common are,

an art-- of-- becoming

The thou art, cannot,

be said of me, myself

I am, but Thou...

...Thou Art...