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Sunday, May 28, 2023

CHAT GPT

by Harold Oberman


AI-generated image


AI ate my sonnet.
Gulped it down / Digested it,
Spit it out in reconstituted iambs.

I want to slip it some clichés,
Gunk up its system with pablum,
Make its metaphors as mediocre as mine.

Oh, don’t taunt me you rhyming clock,
You metronome, you precise pizza.
You took away my love of form,
Translated poetry into pi.

Eat it all my clever friend.


Harold Oberman is a poet and lawyer writing in Charleston, S.C. He has appeared recently in The New Verse News, The Free State Review, An Anthology of Low Country Poets, and has been honored by the Poetry Society of South Carolina for, among other things, a sonnet. However, he has given up on that after a now antiquated version of AI generated the following poem, with minor prodding, in 3 seconds:


Oh gravity, force that keeps us all in place,
That pulls us down and holds us to the earth,
A power strong and constant in its pace,
That gives our feet a steady, solid girth.

But horses, with their grace and beauty wild,
Seem not to feel the pull of gravity's might,
They gallop free, their manes and tails unfurled,
As if to mock the laws that bind us tight.

But though they seem to fly, they too are bound,
By gravity's unyielding grip on all,
And though they run with freedom all around,
They too must fall, when gravity's call.

So let us strive to soar, like horses do,
But always keep in mind, gravity's rule.