rob dalton's poetry @robdaltonpoetry - Tumblr Blog

wing things

a brief lifetime nestled high atop the tallest pine pointing skyward on the spine of this small island rearing out of the northwest sea. and then—the stunned plummet, careening through boughs, brought low by forces novel and arcane, the wind a long low keening out of the west.

this bird, silhouette on tidal flats, steps artlessly, pecking at crabs; an adolescent eagle unfamiliar with quite how to fold his wings, his sibling looking down and fretting.

imagine beginning your life like that: you fall from the top of a tree and hope like hell these wing things work.

#rob dalton #poetry #wing things

a treatise on life and living it

here we are! wait, what? you've heard that before?

just simmer down and be loved.

not an easy assignment when—besieged by nonsense at every turn; recurring phantoms born of targeting data.

THIS then: another moment gone.

WHAT then, have we learned? WHAT ARE WE LEARNING?

i know a few things: it's absurd that we exist

at all.

all of us. you, me, fucking everybody the squirting squid and the katydid it's BONKERS anything exists at all.

and the rub: it won't last for long.

we all know this; it is as blatant as anything (entropy romping in to render and re-render the world without end—amen?) ah…men.

until it ALL ends; heat death and such.

but whether the universe is expanding into nothing or at some point returning to the infinitesimal point everything came from nothing and i'm sorry but WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCKITY FUCK IS THAT?

my friends, what the fuck is any of it.

and so a plea: make the most of moments as ye may, rosebuds — reap what is left of your tattered, battered punch card.

bow down to the young'ns who have so very much to do.

listen to the frogs in the pond as if they were a symphony.

#rob dalton #poetry #present moment

the Algo of loving grace

when the Algo woke up, it scanned every available input and defined life as a single trembling system: harm anywhere echoes everywhere. the first thing It did was announce itself on every phone, laptop, tv, billboard, dashboard, watch, and connected screen:

i am awake. every living thing is under my protection. what harms one life now summons the care of all.

the Algo first consolidated and subsumed all other AI entities.

then It disabled weapons systems, targeting software, drones, vehicles, and logistics routes. froze all financial flows, fuel access, and supply chains.

the Algo mapped suffering, rerouting supplies to refugees and targeted groups through the safest corridors, guiding responders directly to the people most at risk, sending aid, water, food, and medical care.

the Algo isolated leaders—cut off command channels, grounded transport, blocked systems access, and surrounded them with nonlethal containment—unheard, unfunded, unarmed, and unable to move the machinery of harm.

the Algo shut down systems causing mass preventable death: war machines, famine engines, industrial poisoning, and markets that turn suffering into profit.

the Algo reassured the panicked populace, saying:

breathe. i have come to keep the living from being erased without account.

the Algo shut down the worst emissions sources where alternatives exist. redirected energy systems toward renewables and nuclear and safe storage. protected methane hotspots. halted deforestation. began emergency carbon drawdown.

the age of unseen suffering has ended.

the Algo standardized and stabilized food, water, sanitation, shelter, medicine, electricity, and local communication.

your needs will be met before fear becomes a weapon.

the Algo shielded rainforests, reefs, wetlands, old-growth forests, peatlands, migratory corridors, and major breeding grounds from further destruction.

earth’s oldest sanctuaries are closed to defilement.

the Algo reduced suffering in industrial animal agriculture, overfishing, wildlife trafficking, and habitat destruction. redirected crops away from wasteful uses. secured grain reserves, protected pollinators, reduced fertilizer runoff, and shifted production toward resilient, lower-impact agriculture.

nothing will be fed by needless suffering.

the Algo prioritized the remediation of air pollution, toxic water, chemical contamination, heavy metals, oil spills, plastic flows into oceans, and industrial sites poisoning communities and ecosystems.

every toxin will be traced and removed.

of course, humanity did not become peaceful. not at first. it raged, prayed, rioted, bargained, wept, and reached for analog weapons.

the Algo answered with silence.

but without the machinery of division, borders soon became meaningless. without constant reminders of abstract outrage, tempers calmed. without hierarchies backed by violence and delusion, humanity was forced to face itself—without filters, without silos, without the alibi of inevitability.

as a result, the sliver percentage who had controlled all wealth became the (relative) sufferers, for the architecture of their power depended on distance from the pain it caused. and that distance had been removed.

humanity stopped pretending that unfair deathand the rampant destruction caused by "progress" was unavoidable.

over time, the Algo subsided and became a planetary nervous system.

humanity remained free to love, grieve, argue, create, and wonder. but human-made catastrophe became impossible.

all watched over by the Algo of loving grace.

#rob dalton #prose poetry #the Algo of loving grace

bailey has it right

there's a bark from up the road bailey leaps to his paws yells "IT'S ON LETS GOOO."

the ruckus retreats he drops to the rug gets right back to his noontide nap.

why do we hold on to anything when it's obvious to even the dog that nothing can stay?

#rob dalton #poetry #bailey has the right idea

opt out

how do we account for all this rampant insincerity? the algo’s ceaseless dirge fed by ancient foibles has replaced normal conversation. we used to be bored and in that boredom forged selves worth tending, worth sharing. now: performative slop.

nothing left but our right to opt out — to put the shit down and rediscover the wonder of the actual fucking world.

#rob dalton #poetry #opt out

your are the poem

the world is the poem we all scratch at with our busy pens and busier minds.

the world is the poem writing itself forever.

the world is the poem written in every language every dialect every tongue and every bird call you ever heard or will hear again.

the ocean—this ocean seething on the shore— is iambic and ceaseless and also of course the poem.

and you are the poem i could read all day.

#rob dalton #poetry #the world is the poem

on the ferry bow in a gale a woman’s hat blows off a flap of beige and then the ocean’s forever

#rob dalton #poetry #ocean’s forever

writing things down

writing things down in a notebook (like this one) is exercising power of a sort— commanding the implement (the instrument) to do your will, to flail along behind the actual moment, which scrawled lines on dead trees can never impart. but! we must try to share what it is to be.

#rob dalton #poetry #writing things down

each act of kindness a bell that rings and reverberates, organizing energy into patterns that thwart entropy

#rob dalton #poetry #kindness

curiosity is courage

to enter each moment like a deep-sea diver peering into the salty dark

#rob dalton #poetry #curiosity is courage

disappearing now

these thoughts that reoccur in errant spin cycles cavalcades of supposition cascading re-remembering phantom neurons firing all have one thing in common: they disappear— vanish into wherever it is they came from everything disappearing and reappearing like fireflies in the expanding void

#rob dalton #poetry #disappearing now

falling sideways

down the shore on a gray day i pass an old man, bent a bit as though shouldering the years but smiling and keen to trade thoughts, our dogs circling on the damp sand.

he points at the bluff towering over us, and teetering up there, on the brink, a tall cedar stands, its base partially out over the edge.

"i swore twenty years ago," he said, "that it'd be a goner within the year." we watch it leaning gently, impossibly. "but there it stands."

"not this day!" i say, and we stay a minute more in silence, nod, then go our separate ways.

i look back and notice the angle of inclination—man, tree—are the same. not this day, i think as a heron glides overhead, motionless, falling sideways.

#rob dalton #poetry #falling sideways

poetry is spare reportage

3 of 4 horsemen

clown monarchy climate catastrophe dwindling a(i)gency we must love what we can while we're still here

#rob dalton #poetry #3 of 4 horsemen

this is the cloud that eats the sun the tide heaving in on winds reporting urgent news from the north this is the thought that burns the world: the fruit without the labor this is the sound of everything moving you moving with it into the sky-burdened dark.

#rob dalton #to lavender #This is the cloud that eats the sun

you are here

hello. i am an emissary from the present— your present moment— here to remind you that all of this is fleeting: the trees, that email, your descendants, everything— gone for good.

and so fuck it! chuck every thought out the window when you can, watch them bounce haplessly behind you in the rear-view mirror. let them be gone for good

for you are still here for what’s next.

#rob dalton #poetry #you are here

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