HAIKU DIALOGUE – Man-Machine Interface – TMI – long list
Man-Machine Interface with Guest Editor Alex Fyffe
By now, most of us are probably exhausted by the discussions around AI-this and LLM-that. Technology’s exponential growth is hard to keep up with, and each generation seems shorter and shorter even as the divides between them grow farther and deeper. The juniors at the school where I teach told me recently that “generation alpha is cooked, mister!” To translate: They have no hope for their younger siblings’ generation. They explained that “the kids these days” (remember, these are practically “kids” themselves!) are already caught in the rabbit hole of online misinformation and “brain rot” entertainment, and they all seemed to agree as a class that they couldn’t see any way for them to come out of it as fully functional people. Of course, every generation tends to despair the hopeless inadequacies of the next, so maybe we can chalk up their young cynicism to age-old attitudes. Then again, these complaints typically come later in life – adults griping about teens –, not from those so young already – teens griping about grade schoolers.
But whether or not all this doom and gloom is warranted, one thing is certain: To live in the modern world is to engage with technologies most of us don’t fully comprehend. Whether ordering food on a screen instead of from a cashier, watching other people play games on our phones, or asking a chatbot to write our essay for us, technology has become embedded in our daily lives. The prompts for this series – Man-Machine Interface – will be about the relationship between humanity and technology. Now that much of the cyberpunk fiction I loved in my younger years has invaded our reality, let’s write some haiku and senryu from this cyberpunk (cyberpop-punk?) perspective.
Below is Alex’s selection of poems on the topic of TMI:
after school
a long line of
parked scrollersMargaret Anderson
Vancouver, BC
techno paralysis doom surfing the breaking headlines
Daya Bhat
India
doomscrolling
the dinner table
full of feedsHifsa Ashraf
Pakistan
coffee pot
nearly cool
infinite scrollByron Wilson
Talent, OR
ku scrolling – into the arms of morpheus
simonj
UK
doomscrolling
everyone too busy
to look up at the starsAnnie Wilson
Shropshire, UK
a vast night sky
my phone’s light dims
under the starsRichard Straw
Cary, North Carolina
grizzly bear
settled in for winter
not reading the newsSean Murphy
Maryland, USA
too much internet —
I sink into
a net of sunlightSanjana Zorinc
Hrvatska
leaving Facebook
for some ADL
bathtub emoji(ADL – activities of daily living)
Jackie Chou
Pico Rivera, CA
modern life
running to stand still –
I pick flowersJulie Parker-Kinsey
Auckland, New Zealand
power outage
a calm
in the stormSusan Farner
USA
I sleep my phone . . .
outside a blue jay sings
the same old songKimberly Kuchar
Austin, TX
media fast
still I get breaking news
from ravensCynthia Anderson
Yucca Valley, CA
fomo
grandma switches to jomo ~
less is more(fomo = fear of missing out)
(jomo = joy of missing out)fomo
grootmoeder stapt over naar jomo ~
minder is méér(fomo = angst om iets te missen)
(jomo = plezier door iets te missen)Guido De Pelsmaeker
Holsbeek, Belgium
desert hiking
our cell phones relax
in a dead zoneJohn Zheng
Mississippi, USA
duvet day . . .
painting the pane
drops of dew(Duvet day is a day off work, not because you are ill but because you need some time to rest.)
Monica Kakkar
India and USA
screenlessness
our tent holding off
the streamingC.R. Harper
USA
thick grease
wraps my Friday fish’n’chips –
old newsAnne Curran
Hamilton, New Zealand
packed chapati
newsprint
bleeds blackKavita Ratna
India
thoroughly chewing
yesterday’s headlines
stray cattleGeetha Ravichandran
Chennai, India
endless headlines
darting from all directions—
paper airplanesPatricia Haddock
San Francisco, CA
dinner date—
bite by bite
on instaNeena Singh
Chandigarh, India
after-hours
the ceaseless pinging
of the news appsJahnavi Gogoi
Ajax, Ontario, Canada
too loud
for quiet desperation
nowadaysCharles Harper
Yokohama, Japan
spewing out the news frenzy ticker
Shloka Shankar
India
endless news cycle
I try to shift gears
to the present momentSari Grandstaff
Saugerties, NY
The world
too much with us
stalking headlinesSudha Devi Nayak
Bhubaneswar, India
gobbling up
the gobbledygook
AI and ITracy Davidson
Warwickshire, UK
the world
at our fingertips
my new galaxyKathabela Wilson
USA
twenty-three volumes
reduced to a click
BritannicaChrista Pandey
Austin, TX
screenshots
no secrets are safe
under the moonlightAnthony Rabang
Philippines
white rabbit
following hyperlinks
to the upside downTerri French
Alabama, USA
the butcher bird’s
sweet song— the shuddery
of small screen realitywanda amos
Australia
media feed
a friend’s death between
complex recipesAdele Gallogly
Hamilton, Ontario, Canada
next apocalypse-
unfiltered information
flooding the planetNatalia Kuznetsova
Russia
Rainy day-
a flood of angry posts
about potholesCaroline Ridley-Duff
England
rain delay baseball announcers drown us with statistics
Sam Bateman
Everett, WA
static
in the news bulletin…
rain on the roofArvinder Kaur
Chandigarh, India
compassion exhaustion
another flood
of guiltPeggy Hale Bilbro
Alabama, USA
news ticker an endless stream of sardines
susan burch
Hagerstown, MD
fish after fish
slowly swims under the bridge
next to my smartphoneUrszula Marciniak
Poland
news pours in—
my coffee mug
still emptySathya Venkatesh
Coimbatore, India
phishing in a stream
of information
scammer’s paradiseMargie Gustafson
Lombard, IL
search history
the tide erases
footprintsC.X. Turner
U.K.
the politician’s career
before and after
surrogacyDeborah Karl-Brandt
Sinzig, Germany
trans news cycle
my right to life
an endless debateThomas Haynes
Lakewood, OH
data center
we livestream
the protestAJ Johnson
Stephens City, VA
myriad bubbles
of misinformation
billionaire bingoEavonka Ettinger
Long Beach, CA
attention economy
the Strait of Hormuz
beats the opening bellMagedah Shabo
USA
wars and disasters
the unknown happiness
of not being informedTsanka Shishkova
Sofia, Bulgaria
grandfather’s ear
pressed to the radio
– the war won’t lastDejan Ivanovic
Lazarevac, Serbia
war news each one defeats the others
Mirela Brailean
Iasi, Romania
war news
barely trending —
dried honeycombMartina Matijević
Vidovci, Croatia
beach pebbles —
the weight of wars
in my phoneLori Kiefer
UK
geese fly over
grasses in bloom
death tolls on his wristPamela Garry
Connecticut, USA
wars
and stories of wars–
last week’s newsNancy Brady
Huron, OH
hidden texts
lost in the hieroglyphics
of a bookwormJohn Hawkhead
UK
after the wildfire
the satellite image
still greenSandip Chauhan
USA
digital age
I let my fingers
do the walkingJenn Ryan-Jauregui
Tucson, Arizona
cloud backup
the Milky Way
unindexedNalini Shetty
Mumbai, India
staycation—
checking the weather
in barcelonathomas david
UK
Thoreau implies
all murders are the same
intimate femicideMaxianne Berger
Outremont, Quebec
weekend chores …
catching up on podcasts
at 2x speedSumitra Kumar
India
hummingbird
another tune
for the morning feedZahra Mughis
Lahore, Pakistan
cloud bank
storing more data
than dollarsKanjini Devi
The Far North, Aotearoa, New Zealand
dismissing the very news we crave
Roberta Beach Jacobson
Indianola, IA
false memory syndrome
or no memory
at allMark Gilbert
UK
embracing AI —
she drops
her astrologerTomislav Maretic
Croatia
all the best phrases
borrowed from chat gpt
cherry blossomsAmoolya Kamalnath
India
Join us next week for Alex’s commentary on additional poems…
Bios
Guest Editor Alex Fyffe teaches high school English in the Houston area. His haiku and senryu have been published in various journals, including Frogpond, Modern Haiku, Failed Haiku, Akitsu Quarterly, and the Asahi Haikuist Network. He is also a contributor at Prune Juice, where he writes articles about modern Japanese senryu in translation, and he is currently working on a series of articles for the Japanese gendai senryu journal Manten no Hoshi comparing the similarities and differences between English-language and Japanese-language senryu. Some of his favorite short form poets include Issa, whose work he discovered in the intermediate Japanese textbook he used while studying in Hikone, Japan, and Santoka, whose writing introduced him to the liberating concept of “freeform haiku.” Currently, Alex uses haiku in the classroom to ease students into poetry and build their confidence as readers and writers. He posts haiku, including translations of contemporary Japanese haiku and senryu, on Twitter @AsurasHaiku and on Bluesky @asurashaiku.bsky.social.
Assistant Editor Lafcadio, a former teacher, now works from home writing, editing and proofreading study guides for nursing textbooks. She lives in Tennessee. She has written poetry for a long time but a couple of years ago fell in love with Japanese micropoetry and hasn’t looked back. Lafcadio has been published in a number of journals and anthologies. She writes under the nom de plume of Lafcadio because nom de plume is so fun to say. You can read her poems on Twitter (X) @lafcadiopoetry or BlueSky @lafcadiobsky.
Assistant Editor Vandana Parashar is an associate editor of haikuKATHA and one of the editors of Poetry Pea and #FemkuMag. Her debut e-chapbook, I Am, was published by Title IX Press (now Moth Orchid Press) in 2019 and her second chapbook Alone, I Am Not, was published by Velvet Dusk Publishing in April 2022.
Lori Zajkowski is the Post Manager for Haiku Dialogue. She lives in New York City and enjoys reading and writing haiku.
Managing Editor Katherine Munro lives in Whitehorse, Yukon Territory, and publishes under the name kjmunro. She served as Membership Secretary for Haiku Canada for ten years, and her debut poetry collection is contractions (Red Moon Press, 2019). Find her at: kjmunro1560.wordpress.com.
Portrait by Laurel Parry
THF strives to maintain a safe and friendly environment for our readers and site participants. Participation in our offerings assumes respectful and appropriate behavior of all parties. We reserve the right to refuse service to anyone, for any reason, at any time.
If you see something you feel may violate our Code of Conduct, please report it to the appropriate moderator or the President here.
Please note that all poems & images appearing in Haiku Dialogue may not be used elsewhere without express permission – copyright is retained by the creators. Please see our Copyright Policies.
Photo Credit:
Banner Photo Credit: A double-exposed photograph showing Tesla in his Colorado Springs laboratory by Dickinson Alley, ca. 1899, Public Domain Image Archive
Haiku Dialogue offers a triweekly prompt for practicing your haiku. Posts appear each Wednesday with a prompt or a selection of poems from a previous week. Read past Haiku Dialogue posts here.
Thanks Alex for including mine, and for pushing us to write about things which are all around us. I enjoyed these two opposites:-
gobbling up
the gobbledygook
AI and I
Tracy Davidson
compassion exhaustion
another flood
of guilt
Peggy Hale Bilbro
I’m happy you shouted out Davidson’s poem. It’s such a fun one to read thanks to the repetition of sounds in “gobbling” and “gobbledygook.” It gets at the ridiculousness of overconsumption. The speaker is like a little social media goblin. The ending, “AI and I,” is fun, too. It is reminiscent of Mountain’s “pig and i,” but instead of the speaker connecting with nature, she is being trained alongside The Machine to gobble it all down so they can spit it back up later.
Thank you, Alex (and the entire HD team), for these terrific prompts and selections. I am honored to be included amongst so many of my cherished poetry friends. Speaking of which, I couldn’t resist highlighted this striking duo:
dismissing the very news we crave
Roberta Beach Jacobson
Indianola, IA
false memory syndrome
or no memory
at all
Mark Gilbert
UK
Thanks for highlighting mine and Roberta’s – yours was also hard-hitting.
You are very welcome, and thank you!
A wonderful selection on a such a fascinating and timely topic. Thanks for including mine.
Thank you so much Alex Fyffe for the wonderful topic to write on, and for including one of mine in this week’s amazing selections.
Thanks also to the editors Lafcadio and Vandana Parashar. Thank you KJ Munro and Lori for making this possible.
Looking forward to the commented poems as well.
Daya
Thank you for including my haiku! Fascinating haiku here – great observations in haiku poetry. Love Margaret Anderson’s haiku, Annie Wilson’s and Sathya Venkitesh’s. These interpretations of the theme are so relatable.
Thanks for sharing your favorites!
after school
a long line of
parked scrollers
Margaret Anderson
Vancouver, BC
I like this one, too, because it evokes multiple images at once. From one perspective, I envision a long line of cars outside the school, parents waiting for their kids to be released, scrolling on their phones to pass the time until then. But you could also read the “parked scrollers” as the kids themselves, sitting (or “parked”) outside waiting for late parents, scrolling as they do. Either way, it’s a relatable image, as you said.
news pours in—
my coffee mug
still empty
Sathya Venkatesh
Coimbatore, India
This is a fun one, and certainly one I can connect with. One note: I wondered if it might not be even stronger if “news pours in” were the last line instead.
endless news cycle
I try to shift gears
to the present moment
Sari Grandstaff
Saugerties, NY
It is a struggle, isn’t it? I like how the “endless new cycle” here becomes suggestive of the cycle of death and rebirth (Samsara) by the end of the poem (“present moment” seeming to indicate a Buddhist focus on right mindfulness). We all get caught up in this cycle sometimes, and it can be hard to pull our minds back to what is in front of us, to our own lives and necessary areas of focus. The news pulls us in and kills us a little over and over again…
Thank you Alex for selecting my haiku. I am privileged.
The world
too much with us
stalking headlines
Sudha Devi Nayak
Bhubaneswar, India
I appreciate a good allusion, and I thought this was an apt one in the context of the prompt, since Transcendentalism is an offshoot of Romanticism, and Wordsworth is one of the fathers of that movement. “The World is Too Much With Us” is a particularly strong choice, as it reinforces much of what Thoreau was saying (“Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers… For this, for everything, we are out of tune”). I like how you have connected this to the news cycle and our obsession with keeping up. “stalking” is a strong choice, getting at the obsession for the hunt. Whether we’re stalking headlines or they’re stalking us, the world is, indeed, too much with us.
Thanks Alex for selecting my haiku: “FOMO and JOMO”!