I am researching the uses and abused of Generative Artificial intelligence in creating literature. As a first stage in my experimentation, I created these two poems:

Simple Pleasures

Buttoning and unbuttoning my shirt

does not make me feel like a man

but it does make me feel grown-up

which is almost as good.

Bending to check under the bed for monsters,

I’m not afraid of what I’ll find.

It’s under the bed,

that’s what counts, and now it knows

I’m checking on it. That’s all I want.

And when I say “all,” I mean all.

That’s all I want: a regular life,

a regular life with a home-cooked meal

and some loose-fitting jeans and Lysol

for cleaning up my bathroom. If you knew

the pleasure this brought me, if you had any idea,

you might never leave your house again.

It was just yesterday that my shower curtain rod broke.

The landlord hadn’t fixed it yet so I went out to get a replacement.

At the store, there were so many kinds:

twistable, rustproof, extra-long, extra strong.

But none of them was right;

none of them was like the one that had come down in my bathroom.

So when I got home, holding my new curtain rod,

instead of putting it up and getting my shower over with,

I just stood there in the doorway holding it for awhile.

I don’t know how long. A good long while though.

Then finally I set it down in the hallway and walked away from it.

This morning when I woke up, everything felt different somehow:

like somehow in the night things had rearranged themselves

inside me.

Tonight after work, before dinner, before TV,

after dishes – but way before bedtime –

tonight after work tonight will be like Christmas:

me hanging my new shower curtain rod.

Fading Whispers

A sullen thread,

A muffled key,

A mottled mirror,

A knotted book,

A murmuring tire:

I chase fading whispers.