The Art of Learning
When it rains in the desert
the smart machines recommend
a quiet heart and a still mind.
Eastern college boys never quit
lumbering across the Divide
scrounging for bird points and pinch pots.
The bare soil cracks when Alexa
refuses to use Shoshone names.
Siri studies Google maps
of the Amargosa Valley
while self-driving cars drift
the flats below the Panamints.
In the era of strip-mall
yoga and e-signed pre-nups
evil is full of oughts too.
I dare the land to break out
of this Netflix void, alkali
as loss. ChatGPT, blunt
as a colonel, proves that words
were carried West by human engines
crossing artificial frontiers.
How long till Amazon becomes
endemic to the Mojave?
The Sierras already call
for the highest and best use
of YouTube intelligence.
Co-op games still teach the discipline
of searching the hills for memory
to burn. Chess is always better
with CGI tortoises and Gila
monsters. The border industry
booms when the algorithms
enter a spiral of hope.
I was sitting on the porch
with the ristra and the ash can
when uh oh I erased the urtext.
Over and Out
My AI thinks we should commercialize
the presidency since we’re vessels
of data grown from found DNA.
Yesterday it wanted me to know about
the Code Talkers but not the Long Walk.
Hand me that can of oops upside the head.
Item 3: Scientists in a private
lander are using live imaging
to map the genome of lunar microbes.
I’ll change the setting to post-human
and send a new species to the moon
in a blink of NASA’s third eye.
Since I quit giving a fuck
I can’t remember shit
so my go-to power is dark matter.
Alexa, remind me to schedule
my celebration of being.
Runaway
A Target bag in the catclaw
benchmarks the ecotone’s passage north.
Hackberry leaves coil around
lesions printed by a new canker.
Desolation Lake shrank to a puddle
where a horde of salamander larvae
thrashed in swampy sweet-smelling broth.
My ETD is coming right up.
I’ve always been one to poke sea
anemones so given my druthers
I’ll pull an Irish goodbye and leave
an urn of memes on the mantel.
Apologies. You’ll have to give
my precious idiolect some leeway.
In Heaven, is it pea-can or puh-con?
Will my new wellness regimen
include rest? What about bliss?
A menagerie of pearlescent
cherubs and frisky goblins
laden with tapas and orchids?
Swank! Put me down as a no-show.
Pop goes the catheter. Aww!
