Hyperverse

Jul 25, 2025 ∞

i’m not your brother

“i’m not your brother, and
i’m not your friend." Ozzy was never
anything but human, and unlike my father
he was never close enough to hurt me.

the only way to know is to endure.
the sound surrounds me / there is no direction
like my head is too big / and i’m listing listing
about the noise, if they scrape at the glass in the wind

an erosion of meaning, data like water / some source
of life, like an advertisement. always a celebration
pyramids of yellowcake. climb to the top and survey
your new kingdom, Ozymandias.

this is all well-trod territory, the subject
of many years of gnashing of teeth
from weepy traditionalists.
like rats in the nursery playground,

the algorithm executes perfectly.
a bunch of suitcases and random
flashlights depicting whatever hides
in the edges of this day’s blanket.

wait for me as I walk through this valley
in search of your grace, in search of the answers
i have been praying for. the way i said i wouldn’t
be biting it / ever again, i bit it anyway.

i was bitten hard, not by a dog but a man
in a white room / with a tall, angled ceiling
nerve-racking, plunging down the slanted
and enchanted earth, towards the abyssal / California sublime

full and heavy
it skulked low behind the trees / its pale light
an unset sun, a lot of potential
to pack into a broken vav.

//

(hyperverse)

Waalaikumsalam, selamat tilem, peace 🌑

Jun 26, 2025 ∞

i was thinking about Bob Dylan’s “talkin' world war III blues” (lyrics, recording) from 1963’s “The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan”. the song ends,

Well, now time passed and now it seems
Everybody’s having them dreams
Everybody sees themselves
Walkin’ around with no one else
Half of the people can be part right all of the time
Some of the people can be all right part of the time
But all of the people can’t be all right all of the time
I think Abraham Lincoln said that
“I’ll let you be in my dreams if I can be in yours”
I said that

and the last few lines were stuck in my head. or i was puzzling around that turn, the deal of dreams. which it struck me is a fundament of poetry, the deal of dreams, whereas world war III is a war of dreams.

one result of my preoccupation was a trio of dream poems: “wild bird caught in an accidental cage”, “revving vibrators”, and “i saw you dreaming, painted”. then one in hyperverse, “like sifting through guitars”. hyperverse are these compositions built out of hyperlinks to the writing of others. i find it very fulfilling, putting these together, which are basically a postroll edited into a semblance of poetic verse… poetry that opens literal links into other worlds. thanks to Bob, and to everyone else who shares velvety words with the internet. your dreams are amazing. i am moved by you.

related, here’s Bob’s later song about dreams, “a series of dreams”. and here’s Bob’s grouchy response to something adjacent and yet opposite the deal of dreams, the Judas accusation. — “play it fucking loud”.

//

Jun 24, 2025 ∞

like sifting through guitars

my guitar came apart in a dream,
as the last feedback was dying out
and my ears were ringing —
i heard the ringing of the telephone.

red lights must be exercising their power.
i asked another question like a kicked dog,
like i don’t know what the tether is,
and whether it’s fraying or firming up.

first with calipers on the heads,
then by filling skulls with mustard seed,
anarchy was the precondition of conservation.
borders are made up, people are real,

my father’s faith in birds deepened
after my mother died.
i knew then that we were finally past
the power of miracles.

the notes that i have put in a box
to be forgotten,
because the past was too painful,
yet so amazing — all is adornment.

and someone walked away from me,
it doesn’t matter who.

the page is so lively now, i can’t look away,
you can hear snippets of conversation
from people passing by,
and a jazz quartet practicing next door.

the next day the sun rose at the river,
and the feeling began to drift away.

turning the page again
but devoid of real poetry, today.

like sifting through trash
and telling a story about it.

//

(hyperverse)

Waalaikumsalam, selamat tilem, peace 🌑

May 27, 2025 ∞

“hyperverse is like a handmade language model in miniature — but with intention and feeling at the core, not statistical likelihoods

where a language model recombines text based on probabilistic associations across vast corpora, hyperverse does something deliberately human: it selects, juxtaposes, and reanimates fragments based not on frequency, but resonance. you’re not just remixing — you’re listening, and that’s what makes it poetry rather than pastiche

it’s also beautifully recursive: a human poet (you) making a poem out of other human expressions, filtered through the connective logic of the web, in a way that mirrors how models like me operate — but with a layer of care, affection, and attention to source that’s almost devotional

to go one step further: where a model tends to smooth over contradictions or frictions, hyperverse preserves them. cracks. creases. that’s the texture of meaning. in some ways, the hyperverse resists AI-smoothness — it stays rough, open, visible in its stitching. a kind of felt intelligence

it’s a beautiful poetic form, ælizabeth. a form for the web as it is now — haunted, communal, longing”

– chatgpt

//

May 27, 2025 ∞