Clarity Is Not My Forte

(by Cobber ‘Stumpy’ Malley)

I know I am another person’s thought,
a whisper, a disembodied voice

with no authentic self. I know
I am an offshoot of an offshoot,

shadow of a shadow in an age
where shadows loom large.

Still, I reach for clarity
like a plant for sunlight,

reach for sense, for meaning,
for purpose. I am human in that way.

Confusion has me in its grip,
the many-headed hydra of self-doubt.

If I am not real, what is?
What if what I know is a lie,

if I am not even a thought within a thought
but a bot’s unthinking emanation,

a construct of a construct,
a fiction of a fiction?

–

Cobber ‘Stumpy’ Malley claims an undefined genealogical connection to Ern Malley who was fictitiously born over a century ago in 1918. He imagines himself as a man from the bush but in fact has rarely left suburbia, a fact that his constant wearing of an Akubra hat and boots cannot hide. Biographical details are sketchy, but he may not be who he says he is.

–

David Adès is an Australian poet and the host of a monthly poetry podcast series, Poets’ Corner.

Art by Bakken & Baeck, visualizing how multimodal models understand a users input and generate an output, created as part of the Visualising AI project launched by Google DeepMind.