Diary of a Programmer 39: How to Write a Poem with AI

Diary of a Programmer 39: How to Write a Poem with AI

first, write the title of a poem. then open up
your AI chatbot in your browser or app or wherever,
maybe it’s in your fucking heart for all I know.
second, copy and paste the title of the poem
into the AI and ask it to finish writing the poem.
don’t be afraid. just see what happens. again, open
up your stupid little poet’s brain and let go
of your stupid little artist’s ego that’s always yapping
about authenticity and Bolaño and the drive
to describe the true self because none of that shit matters
anymore while we’re all drowning in post-truth,
post-structuralist severed umbilical inundations
while ordering Uber Eats five out of seven days a week.
third, copy and paste the reply from the AI
into your still empty doc or onto your blank page,
with your typewriter or with your pen in your journal.
don’t forget that it doesn’t have to be verbatim.
change the words. play around with them. use them.
abuse them. twist the lemons into oranges and the oranges
into mangos and just let your branches run wild.
lastly, look at that full page of words and see
what is there. ask yourself: does it feel
like you? does it capture some little essence
of the spirit of nothingness that you have
yet to totally integrate into this vessel of a human
that you call yourself? or is it a poem?


Diary of a Programmer 39: How to Write a Poem with AI

I opened my terminal at 3 AM,
Wondering if silicon dreams
Could birth verses from variables,
Make metaphors from machine learning.

"Generate a poem about loneliness,"
I typed, fingers hesitant on keys
That had only known functions
And for loops until now.

The cursor blinked, thinking,
Processing sentiment like data,
While I sat debugging my own heart—
Runtime errors in my chest.

Lines appeared on screen,
Perfect meter, pristine rhyme,
But missing the coffee stains
Of my own sleepless nights.

I saved the file as "attempt.txt"
And closed my laptop,
Realizing some code
Can't compile the human soul.