"The AI Poets" and "Trade Wars"

The AI Poets

The computer-poets stand hushed
except for the faint hum
of their efficient fans,
 
waiting for inspiration.
 
It is years now
since they were first ground
out of refurbished silicon
 
into rack-mounted encoders of sound.
 
They outlived their creators and their usefulness;
they even survived
global warming and the occasional nuclear winter;
 
despite their lack of supervision, they thrived;
 
so that for centuries now
they have loomed here in the quiet horror
of inescapable immortality
 
running two programs: CREATOR and STORER.
 
Having long ago acquired
all the universe’s pertinent data,
they confidently spit out:
 
ERRATA, ERRATA.

Trade Wars

Have no patience with pacifists
erecting their palatial liberties
out of the bone heaps of patriots,
calling their mothers “whores,”
their fathers “mongers.”
 
War is a trade
and here lie the many taxed
beyond endurance, who endured
only long enough to pay
the commutations of our freedom.
 
Heed their voices:
evil is not a vice
but a commerce,
an industry
daily employing the mechanisms of destruction.
 
And if we do not understand
the economies of hate,
the bull market in salvage,
or the inflation of the price
of the redemption of freedom,
 
it is enough to know that blood has its price:
most expensive when watered.