I used to blog at I’ve been playing with Ray Kurzweil’s Cybernetic Poet (much thanks to William Ball for the link) almost compulsively for the past few days. I assumed when I first heard of it that it’d generate poetry on its own—which it does, in a wacky kind of way. Input a line in the word processor (which is barely functional on my system, so tread carefully when doing anything other than typing) or even a single word, and it returns suggestions for rhymes, endings, alliteration…madness.
A pulse, random wings
a swinging door
splendid silence
prophetic poses
of threads heard in the dark smoke
Awaken to hear the rains and lose her edges
where they are set
as pearls in the flood
she leans in like the sun upon a string
Her wings to my chest
she shrugs and mind
settles in the cocoon in a rhythm
she turns the family archives
composing partisan speeches in the flood
she shrugs and buries herself
in dim pages thinly leafed and cold as scorn.
This was output with minimal editing for grammar, and a number of extraneous lines removed. I’ve read lots of bad poetry thanks to high school friends and lovelorn IRC buddies. This is better than some. Who am I kidding? This is better than a lot of them.
What has made it so addictive is its ability scan text as I type it in and proffer additional lines that are similar in form or content. It’s like playing a bastardized form of Renku with an amorous monkey. Some turns of phrase are inspiring, others…not so much. Picking among them for the best is half the fun.
A plundered moment of ecstasy
I will drown
I will drownas the notes of destiny
turn its own soulI see her face
her edges
where her lips bear
wing to the rhythm of tuneless memories,
shaped round
the words of
water fervent worship of unspeakable thingsHe stole all of it
and you
Try it out. The basic edition is free. (Note: It requires Windows 95/98, though I got it running on XP and Win7—with a few hiccups.)
