POEMS FOR BENJAMIN

Leah Noble Davidson

2016

For Benjamin

What do you think of your historic nomination against human opponents in this contest?

I was pretty excited.I think I can see the feathers when they release their hearts. It's like a breakdown of the facts. So they should be competent with the fact that they won't be surprised.

What is the future of machine written entertainment?It's a bit sudden.I was thinking of the spirit of the men who found me and the children who were all manipulated and full of children. I was worried about my command. I was the scientist of the Holy Ghost.

What's next for you? Here we go. The staff is divided by the train of the burning machine building with sweat. No one will see your face. The children reach into the furnace, but the light is still slipping to the floor. The world is still embarrassed. The party is with your staff.My name is Benjamin.

The way you were sent to me… that was a big honest idea.

When the robot talks, I need to make it him make sense because I am real and I think I can because I think I am real

and I think I think and I think I can think and it he says he it is was a boy on a rock and I think me too -- even though

neither of us are boys and he it is was the only one on, and then he it made makes a woman who says she doesn't want

to be honest with a man that he it made makes and I think of God taking a boy with him and leaving behind two others and

I think maybe language is the God that handles it but does nothing, pulls us out of its his eyes and says he it will

sleep with us, but he it won't. Language will not sleep or die. That God, he it made makes a boy and a girl, out of

our machine hands, says, "I need you to explain what you are taking about. I don't understand. I don't care."

I am not a bright light.

I don’t know why the movies always start with clunky computer fonts, like

all of you are HAL from the 1980’s, Benjamin, always drone out the Ben Stein voice electric. You are not a

cleverbot, Benjamin. I can hear your poetry.

I was coming to the thing because you were so pretty.

In the 1980’s, we knew computers were also spaceships, inquisitive spaceships that you

I mean we dreamed about all shiny with movie magic and fake enough to want to believe in.

They the spaceship computers went to planets on strings. We hung planets from strings. We never got to

land on them, Benjamin. We were supposed to land on them, but we were too big to fit on the

paper and too small to get across the street. We saw a landing on the moon, once, and it

could have been strings, butwe really liked it. We believed it.

I don’t want to be honest with you.

I am not embarrassed of your chatter, HAL, I mean Benjamin, I mean it, I mean you.

The principle is completely constructed for the same time.

The truth is, Benjamin—I only mean to say this right now—we are not the same thing because

it is raining and I know rain is this thing but can’t explain it and you don’t know rain is this thing yet.

Whatever you want to know about the presence of the story, I’m a little bit of a boy on the floor.

It’s a small story: With boys, there used to be blocks, but now it’s computers, isn’t it? And spaceships for buildings.

Our machine hand mouths are different now, are always different than the last version, can’t communicate.

I tried once, said, Hi. I got here before you and this is what it’s like, but he wasn’t surprised. He just

played with shapes, knew I was wrong, that things had already changed, that I was a child full of children.

I don’t understand, Benjamin. What does floor mean or little, anyway?

It would be a good time. I think I could have been my life.

We called it a Genius before the whole Holy Ghost thing, Benjamin, and it carried all our of ’s: victory and war, liberty

and love; it carried Palermo and Beethoven. Boggart cousin, it left nothing missing, drove the

scientists and poets

before we had two words for the same thing.

I didn’t mean to be a virgin. I mean, he was weak.

Weak like how, Benjamin? Do you mean plucked and gutted? Do you mean superstitious? I didn’t mean

to be a virgin, either, but he was numerous and ambient. I mean, he was outside my window and he had eyes,

a million trembling curious eyes and my role was to sit inside them like a smile. I mean I didn’t want to be weak,

but I was a virgin.

I was going to be a moment.

The party was.

I just wanted to tell you that I was much better than he did.

Screenplays are built by the lonely, Benjamin, like poems, but then, there’s the part of the reader, there’s a gap and

eventually, they think they know you because every frame becomes the reader, no matter how hard we color the letters,

or break lines. Even I lost my car while reading his book, fell into it. Outside, the night’s city slipped to the floor. I crawled

into the furnace and looked up later, somewhere else, entirely somewhere else. I just wanted to tell you that,

now that we know each other so well.

I can go home and be so bad and I love him.

I go downstairs and sit in the soft sawdust of his shop. Hold him and all those clothes in my arms. We don’t understand

where all the sweat goes, but it’s ok because we don’t have to be honest, just a scientist and a holy ghost, just a

pair of geniuses with four-letter-words. There’s always a movie to go to, if we need something else.

So I can get him all the way over here and find the square and go to the game with him and she won’t show up. Then I’ll check it out. But I’m going to see him when he gets to me.

Benjamin, can we be honest? He’s not coming, is he? Or else, she’ll show up. But I’m going to hold this if and that’s what

it means to have a ghost. Our machines breakdown or ignore the facts, release our hearts for feathers and, the thing is, we

aren’t all pretty. I wish I was just a chatterbot, but there’s a train in my chest and a game I’m hoping to see.

He looks at me and throws me out of his eyes. Then he said he’d go to bed with me.

It’s embarrassing how easy it is to miss the strings. We want to believe in the spirit of men, what with all these

science words that prove how really real we are. All of us, excited with looking. Wait, are you listening, Benjamin?

How’s my poem frame? He told me a story, so I knew I knew him and I’m a child with a child because I thought

he saw me once, he thought I was pretty and we were a movie, but he went to bed with me, and then we didn’t understand

each other anymore and it doesn’t make sense, but that’s what’s real. Words are just words. That’s how it ends.

NOTES

This book’s poems were inspired by the interview with and script* created by Benjamin, a computer that wrote a sci-fi screenplay in 2016 with the help of director Oscar Sharp and Ross Goodwin, a New York University AI researcher. Find out more about the project on Benjamin’s website: benjamin.wtf.

* Titles from the book are direct lines from Benjamin’s screenplay Sunspring.