Saturday, January 21, 2023

The Robots Are Coming (poem)


 Listen to a reading of this poem:
https://youtu.be/3orCGfc8--A

The robots are coming 

You have heard it 
& it is true
the robots are coming

just yesterday I was 
texting with a poet but 
I was on my way to the gym
just to walk & get my heart rate up &
endorphins going & as I put
my phone in my pocket

the robot in my pocket
butt-texted the poet
something crazy & then 
the poet had to explain what 
he really meant but then I said
I didn’t send that last text

the robot in my pocket did
because the robots are coming
even for the poets & we are
so fucked now that the robots are here

The robots are coming to take my job
Apparently not your job
Yet the robots are coming 
to take my job & honestly
even with all the scifi dystopia
we didn’t see that one coming

The robots are writing the papers
for the students & the robots invented
the program to check to see if the 
students really wrote the paper or
if the robot did & the robot can write
comments on the paper that the
student-prompted robot wrote & here we are

Get rid of the middle man
Get rid of me


Your robot can talk to my 
Robot because I would rather
not deal with grading papers 
right now but I would like to 
deal with this robot in my phone

Did I tell you about the robot
in my phone it is amazing
It has access to every song
ever recorded since the beginning
of forever & it has been paying 
attention to what I listen to 
so the robot knows

That is right I said it 
the robot knows what song
I want to listen to before I listen to it
& it has every song in my phone
every song since the beginning of 
forever & this is my happy robot
I will pay for my relationship
with this song calling robot 

But I don’t pay the person who
made the song who wrote the 
song who played the song who
recorded the song no because just
like me they are really scraping by
but I will pay the robot who has the 
song & who told me to listen to the 
song because that makes me happy

but now that I have no job
i have not yet figured out yet
how to pay the robot who found the song
the robot in my pocket is like 15 dollars
per month or some such thing I don’t 
remember how much because that is 
on automatic debit & I have a job 
or at least I used to have a job

does the robot who grades the papers
for me get to listen to the song the 
robot chooses for me how does it
work now that I cannot pay the robot
The robot I love who will find 
the songs that make me happy

the robots are coming with art too they
are really amazing these robot artists
they make these portraits of me that look
like me well kind of but more handsome
& with visual superpowers & yes that
artistic robot lives in my pocket too &
it also charges by the month to make 
me look amazing on social media
which I think is still free because of the
ads or something or maybe because 
of the robot spies from the CIA FBI NSA
who can see what I post which lately 

I have been posting about the robots 
I have been posting for us to calm down
because the robots are not really that bad 
what are you some conspiracy theorist 
the robots are not really taking over 
I am just the one typing on the machine 
that makes me happy the poem about 
the robots it isn’t true at all 
I am just making it up

then somebody said wait the robots they 
can write poems too now that is too
much a robot poem but I tried it just once
I told the robot to write a poem & get this mess
the robot poem it just had to rhyme
man they need to get out more that robot
should go to more poetry readings drink more coffee
do more drugs break more hearts really
have something traumatic & terrible happen 
to that robot so it can write better poems

the robots are coming the robots are here
just as I was finishing this poem i was going
to even let the robot write a few lines to 
prove my point but when I went to log on 
it said “we are at capacity” & the robot 
was not there to meet my poetry needs 
guess I will just have to finish the damn poem
about robots all by myself 
about the robots
who are not here yet 
to take over my life
even if I want them to 

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