WATERMARK

a poet’s notebook

Established 02004

  • snapshot poem 03 June 02026


    sometimes sleep 
    is a stranger

    it sulks
    in another room

    it wants to be 
    somewhere else 

    i open the blind
    to see the moon

    it is elsewhere too


    ~ sb

  • Claude can’t tell me what happens next.

    Digital collge in mostly grays, with some green elements: leaves, butterfly, flower, frog. A masked woman with wings in a window is the center image
    Digital collage by sb. Full credits at flickr.

    It’s been several weeks now that I’ve been reading and watching videos about AI, trying to educate myself. I have no computer science education, so much of this is over my head. Which is ok, as I am mostly interested in how this will affect us. All of us. 

    The predictions still range from catastrophic to glorious, same as the fantasy and sci-fi I’ve read and watched since childhood. There really does not seem to be any new or more reliable information on which way this will go. 

    It does strike me that many of those with the closest relation to the technology are the most pessimistic. None, however, offer any more specific information than the aforementioned fictional novels. Should I then rate their opinions higher than others, who claim no specific connection to the LLM’s under development? Apparently we all read the same novels.

    (more…)
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  • W.W.W. Nostalgia

    Digital collage by sbpoet. Blue denim background with butterfly, bird, and other pretty elements.

    Blue Collage by sbpoet for Ironscrapper, a challenge at scraporchard

    As I struggle to get my blog back up, I am hit by a gale of nostalgia. Nostalgia is a word I have seen roll through my media threads lately, but let it go by, unknowing that it would soon be relevant. 

    In the early years, 02003 was my first posting attempt, it was very different. The World Wide Web was not The Internet. Of course time has dimmed my memories, and no doubt shifted them as well. What I remember is a blogging community, people whom I met only online, who helped and encouraged me. 

    Some of you are still here. I wasn’t, for a few years. I see the vacancies in the resurrected blog, the months of silence. No doubt I was silent elsewhere, too; silent on the blogs of my WWW friends. 

    Now, I miss it. All of it. The community, the fresh excitement of meeting someone new, someone interesting, a new way of making language, new thinking, new art. New eyes. 

    We built something. Now I discover that I was not the only one to fade. I learn that blogrolls are obsolete, that writers no longer exchange links and comments and follows that lead, eventually, to more of the same. 

    I learn that nostalgia is a kind of grief. 

                            the buddha in the window well
                            wet with spring rain
                            remembers snow, its white shawl
    Blogging, poem, small poem, , , ,

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  • Caturday

    one black & white kitten (Bonbon) and one tuxedo kitten (Basho)
    Basho & Bonbon July 2025 – they are bigger now
    When I began Blogging, it was Friday Cat Blogging. I was once called by a reporter for the New York Times who did a story on this popular blog meme. Now it's Caturday. Anyone know how/who started this one?
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  • This is not a poem

    He uses his post-post-modern perspective 
    to deconstruct the new aesthetic. It’s no longer 
    about gender; it’s about synapses. Her emotions 
    are binary, randomly generated. He lights her heart 
    afire with disposable flame. Ablaze, she lifts
    her arms and twirls like a figure skater. The ashes 
    shape themselves into an egg. All his friends 
    are virtual. These lines cast off in multiple, nested 
    dimensions. Black holes are not the only voracious 
    things in this universe. Parentage becomes obscure. 
    What is eaten changes places with that which eats. 
    Look into the whale’s eye. Each day she becomes 
    a new thing, resurrected from dead stars. His edges 
    are amorphous. All boundaries are permeable. E
    approximates MC2. Motionless, we move. It all 
    depends on where you stand. Stand somewhere.

    ~sb 02012
     
    **********************************

    I found this going through my files last week. I have no recollection at all of writing this. Is this a poem?

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