Writer_Will Jameison
You’ve seen it on your facebook feed, perhaps you’ve clicked it yourself: ‘What Would I Say?’
We’ve all smirked at the nonsensical phrases cobbled together by ‘bigram and unigram probabilities’, outwardly dismissing the frivolous gibberish but secretly pleased that even on the level of pure chance we’re capable of a curious phrase here and there.
The poems below are found poems in the worst possible way: the shinier finds after sieving through years old Facebook statuses spliced with minute-old comments, and the worst because they represent the crux, or cul-de-sac (crux-de-sac?) of automation. If the factory line can become mechanised, why not a line of poetry? Not mechanised in the weird, oversexed fascism of the Futurist Manifesto, but mechanised to produce rhythmically ergonomic and metaphorically airtight poetry (possibly with a new-car smell).
All the while it’s still personal: like your very own GCHQ, it parses all the content you’ve generated and refashions it for you, saving you vast amounts of probably-not-too-important effort. Considering what I’ve just mentioned, these are pretty baggy attempts: note standard lit-student sonnet which manages fourteen lines and fuckall else.
Computerized poetry has been around for a while (dating back to 1952 with the Mark One ‘Baby’ computer), but now with ‘What Would I Say?’, there is now be lovely, dissociative, personal touch. I’ve never liked the end to Alphaville, where the giant computer brainbox Alpha 60 is thwarted by poetry; maybe soon machines will be quite handy with scansion and rhyming couplets. We will only know we’ve lost the war against the machines when they manage to write a decent villanelle.
Sonnet
victory veins bulging out of me
ok: this stunning display of mass delimbing
as in very erotic
then drip them over baby.
You absolutely beautiful boy, I may drink it.
Yeah my favourite is the means to make your personalities acceptable
I am a child one day, such is the day:
the game of men without eyes open
They accomplished something THIS
IS a clocktower. What more scenes
do you need to honor the circumference of the old
Ok, you will have assembled the sky so that
I left on Monday. I suggest we thought of you
The game of men without flesh behind my eyes, halp
Three Second Apocalypse
Because sincerity is a punk My
dead wives manifest themselves as trains
We should all eat more. All hail the town well just my mum
Hahahaha my childhood died i pissed
in my chippy. all human affection inadequate
by comparison. I die on Monday, otherwise it’s because
I’m scabbed with LIVE COMMENTARY,
FROM the pain of what hands look like
in HD, baby
