Sonnet #396

 Not a single tree is free, they’re owned

Because the land is always spoken for

There is no rock or far, lost corner

Where no deed or treaty holds and zones

All that’s left of wilderness is this

The person isn’t ready yet to build

Or they built and want to keep a vista clear

Or the city hasn’t swelled enough to there

Or the flood zones and pollution could kill.

And oceans in their undiscovered places

Their swirling, teeming freedom from our will

The work of man, we still divide the races

Of fish and food and ships come

And paint their lines of rights in empty spaces

Sonnet #397

 I’m supposed to be working but I’m not

I’m waiting for the next work, the jobs

Of life continue, until the closing bell robs

Time’s trailer of time’s cargo, but I’m not

Racing out the door to work, I’m holding still

The echo of the money is in my back

And in that sound my left knee makes, the cracks

Of bones that aren’t intended means I will

Probably eat tomorrow. Tonight, I wait 

Let moon rise and rain fall and all

Gods creatures settle down, and the beggar’s plate

May pass around the pews without me. Let’s call

This off — The sparrows in their splendor mate

Among the reeds and wander south to fall.

Sonnet #395

 If you just hold still enough the time will come

When all gods creatures lay down in the grass

Lion and lamb and lovely you, all in the same

Field of flowers, where peace, at last at last

Until we are all ready to hold very still

We will need to sharpen our will and steel

And build the pyres of our funerary world

Where all the falling species, all the real

Dwindles into parking lots and oil fields

And we will put this world to sleep enough

To lower lambs and lions and us into movie reels

That are all that carry us, how we laughed,

How we trembled and cried and sang and broke everything

Until we hold still just long enough for grass to respring

The thing about AI

1) It’s really hard for me to care about the AI debate when children are being put in concentration camps.

2) enshittification is coming for AI consumers. The product is going to switch the flip to make maximum money and squeeze like all tech bro tech.

3) the AI debate is causing terrible rifts among creatives at a time when children are being put in concentration camps and mothers and ICU nurses are being murdered in the street.

4) again, bad takes don’t need to be amplified with outrage. The best thing a bad take can have is silence. Bad takes turn sour and fade into nothing against the shifts of enshittification of all tech bro tech.

5) the bad takes that actively harm people are the ones I care about, like how children are being put in concentration camps and transgender humans are being threatened and treated like criminals for the crime of existing. ETA: and women’s rights are being rolled back and causing death and suffering. These bad takes cannot be rendered mute by the greed of those who push them, which is sort of what enshittification does to tech products.

Argue in good faith. Debate in good faith. 

Maybe let’s focus on the children in concentration camps and the blood on the streets and then we can talk about the copyright violations and slop profiteers.