Watch me work:
I’m going to make a statue
from created things.
See there?
Made it.
I’m going to make three statues out of
clay
marble
steel.
See there?
Made it.
I’m going to make a statue of an
older me making
three statues of
clay
marble
steel.
See there?
Made it.
I’m going to make a statue of an
assembly line full of old, young,
child-labor
me-s
making the same statue of an
older me making
three statues of
clay
marble
steel.
See there?
Made it.
I’m going to build a machine that’s programed
to make identical copies of an
assembly line full of old, young,
child-labor
me-s
making the same statue of an
older me making
three statues of
clay
marble
steel.
See there?
Made it.
I’m going to build a supercomputer that stores
the blueprints and programs to make every
machine that’s programmed
to make identical copies of an
assembly line full of old, young,
child-labor
me-s
making the same statue of an
older me making
three statues of
clay
marble
steel.
See there?
Made it.
I’m going to build a super-duperty-duper-bo-buper robot computer
covered in touch-screens
and Dolby 77.1 sound and holograms
and haptic suits and hovercrafts and
lazerbeams that, covered in cameras, flies like a
hawk full of eyes, an artificial
intelligence I name after human names—a made thing
that can faux-make, that can
build a supercomputer that stores
the blueprints and programs to make every
machine that’s programmed
to make identical copies of an
assembly line full of old, young,
child-labor
me-s
making the same statue of an
older me making
three statues of
steel
marble
clay.
See there?
Made it.
Artificial
intelligence
might not be the same as
created
intelligence.
Sorry, but we
are makers,
because we are
made in the image of an original
maker — creator — unlike the robots
we make: just made to look made.
I’m going to write a poem
using created things.
I didn’t create it,
but
see there?
Made it.
You too.
You’re reading it and
(in the reading)
interpreting it and
see there?
You made it.
And so we’ll both look back one day
over this lifeless junkyard full of things we made
that made things
we made
made of things we
found
and tandem wipe our brows
and say, “
whew
we made it.
}{
For newcomers — a note on 50 @ 25:
Once upon a time, I read that the perfect age for writing quality poetry is twenty-three. Apparently most of T.S. Elliot’s stuff came out then, the rest of his work being supposedly non-poetic. This resulted in 46 poems written at 23.
These poems came out exponentially faster and faster before my 24th birthday on April 30th – and I had to write in genres spanning from epic ballads to limericks to get 46 in on time. I guess that means, for better or worse, that’s the best poetry I’ll ever write. Sad day.
Who was I kidding?
Milton was blind and old—oooooold—when he publishedParadise Regained. Emily Dickenson was dead when her stuff came out. My favorite stuff from T.S. Elliot came out after his conversion. So yeah, old age is good for poetry too. Look at Burns and Berry.
(Side note: the name “Berry Burns” sounds like a shady car salesman).
Will I keep up this twice-my-age regimen every few years? Who knows, but this year, here’s to 50 poems at 25 to be written exponentially faster until I turn 26 on April Thirtyish. I do it this the second time around as a way to say: “Here’s to living life well before it’s too late.”
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