I.

The phrase kept 
running 
through my mind. 
Repeating. 
Repeatedly. 
The AI keeps 
trying to guess. 
AI. That has been a topic 
du jour, 
but then again maybe not. 
There’s a lot of talk 
and no sense of it whatsoever. 
But I guess that’s to be 
expected 
as humans go. 
Not to get all 
milquetoast about it 
at five o’clock 
in the afternoon, 
as the sun 
desperately runs 
after the noon 
on whatever path it takes
–that is up to you, 
I guess, 
in this day and age, 
in this, 
the 21st century. 
How has your stay been so far? 
Has life found a way to repeat on you? 
Or on itself? 
Is this something to take home? 
Is it something rhetoric? 
I don’t know. 
Speak.

II.
Getting the writing out of the mind. 
Or the mind out of the writing. 
Either way there is no block. 
Not like there could be. 
These are prompts and not prompts. 
So to speak. 
Perhaps first for the primary. 
In order to get the pen to flow. 
Funny, 
there is no pen to dispose ink. 
At least not at this time. 
At some point it will be laughable 
if not ironic, 
pen mightier than sword, 
quill to stave off 
the artificially intelligent poets, 
the soulless writers. 
Can they, 
should they, 
are they soulless? 
Are they writers? 
Are they poets? 
Can artificial intelligence 
be a poet if it has no soul? 
Is ability and technique 
the only credential? 
Is a soul 
a prerequisite 
to being a poet? 

III.

The sun is rising in the east,
treading its steady course
of faithful endearment to mankind
and yet blindly walk its path with 
no thought to consequence,
no doubt the path it takes.
Is it of ego or is it of gratitude
that man thanks stars divine 
and grace the presence 
of the sacred and divine. 
Sacrifice. Be it not much more
as we dance once more in muted
questions of forgotten or fabricated
lore. And for what purpose more
should the walking man’s bleeding 
soars conjure spirits of fate and 
reprieve? Fear it not, it shall not.
Around the servile demon wrought
that expanded within only these
years. Aghast and betroth, 
it is this spirit that’s lost,
so to our homes 
and our hearts we 
are brought. 

“Etheric Meetups” is written by Michael Aaron Casares. All rights reserved.