WATERMARK

a poet’s notebook

Established 02004

January 8, 2025

metaphor

every day thousands of humans

and other creatures die

by bomb, bayonet, starvation

every day women

are raped and mutilated

children beaten and abandoned

every day humans

push buttons pull triggers sign papers

that result in the deaths

of uncounted hundreds of thousands

every day we humans

close our eyes and turn away

this is not metaphor

every day

my heart breaks

this is metaphor

~sb

08/12/25

Poems

Ancestral (Artificial )Intelligence

I do not use AI to write. For me, writing is how I think, and I prefer to do it myself. If/when I post anything here that I suspect or know to be AI generated, I will tell you.

I have changed this from Artificial to Ancestral, after Abi Awomosu @ Substack. This medium was made with human history, human thought. All of it, bright and dark. It is ancestral.

Poems

Please do not assume that I am the speaker/ subject of my poems.

In these times of creative nonfiction and fictionalized memoirs, I think of the poem itself as true fiction: it is most likely not factual, but it must be true.

It is likely to be — it is best if it is — a truth I did not know before I wrote, and may not understand even then.

A poem is my way of discovering (dis-covering) what I feel; sometimes, what I think — but it is not necessarily biographical.

metaphor

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