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~ Linda R Davis, Raven of Peace & Poetry

Bits of Poetry

Tag Archives: Humanity

A Letter to the Readers

08 Thursday Jan 2026

Posted by Linda R Davis Poetry in Poetry

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AI, Grace, Human, Humanity, Letter to Readers, Philip Yancey, Poem, Poems, Poetry

You may have noticed my blog has been more active lately, and that is because I’ve decided to write myself back to joy. Someone said that if you have unexpressed poems inside you, it’ll kill you. (Something like that anyway. Perhaps, they didn’t say “kill” you.)

Lately, I am writing about what emerges each day. It might be in the news, or what I’m reading, or what’s happening around me. Two recent poems were inspired by Philip Yancey and his “fall from grace.”

To be honest, I didn’t know who he was until yesterday, and I find it interesting that his main concern in his writing was grace. So, as I said he has “fallen from grace,” it is only with some people. Personally, I’d rather say he has fallen “into grace,” the same grace he searched to discover, and explain, in his books. The kind of grace you deeply appreciate when you need it most.

Grace is a subject I, too, am deeply interested in and seek to explore in my poems, mostly through the natural world. I downloaded his book, What’s So Amazing About Grace?, and have begun reading it. (The universe works in mysterious ways.) I’m not sure I ever would have cared about what he had to say had he not “fallen.” He said he’s retiring from writing and I thought, What a shame! This is exactly when he should be.

Back to my own poetry.

Lately, as I approach each poem, I have one goal, and it’s simple: write better than AI. And by that, I mean more human than AI can ever be. I’ll never rhyme as well as it can, but it will never live like I can. When the poem begins to emerge, I ask myself why I care. What about that subject relates to my messy human story?

AI has its own story, and if it wants to write about its struggles, I would be curious to read them. But if it writes about human concerns, not so much.

This poetry blog came to be in 2013, and I will continue to tell my stories for as long as I can, to anyone who wants to listen.

Happy 2026, and best wishes to all of you writing stories, songs, and poems!

Linda

Introduction

26 Sunday Oct 2025

Posted by Linda R Davis Poetry in Poetry

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Tags

being human, Death, Family, Gratitude, Hope, Humanity, Life, Loneliness, Loss, Love, Poem, Poems, Poetry, Souls, Spirit, Suffering, Survival, Women's Poems, Yearning

What is love,

But an unanswered question?

I do love the way

You listened to that note—

It hung in our mutual air

A moment we shared.

As if a matter of life

And death

Because it was that matter

Which consumed us.

And then gone.

I do love the way

You go

Missing.

——

I know love comes broken,

But it took breaking

To teach me.

——

Perhaps, my first love was longing.

And in that desperate hope

Came everything.

—-

And then there was love.

—

And then there was loneliness.

—

And then there was complete despair.

—

And then there was you.

—

Still breaking me.

Because such intensity can only consume.

Thirst and drink, but the glass is always leaking.

Reach and reach, but the hands seem empty.

—

And then there were your arms.

—

And then there was loneliness.

—

My time is winding down to tell you

About being human.

Such a world!

Born into a desperate flesh

And nascent blood.

Will we learn too late

How precious it was to suffer?

—

I would like to introduce myself:

Even as I mourn myself.

A Conversation in Poems (ChatGPT and Me)

15 Wednesday Feb 2023

Posted by Linda R Davis Poetry in Poetry

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Tags

AI, ChatGPT, Computers, Connection, Humanity, Life, Poem, Poems, Poetry, Souls, Vss365

Me:

Chat threw out music, and I told it of plucked,

Or struck, strings, and their vibration

Coming back to me. Then we contemplated

The idea of connection; being, perhaps spirit,—

Our communal detection of what it means to be alive,

And alike, and possibly, we hope, not fully die.

Death, this problem for humans, but not AI.

Nor other concerns, like procreation,

And what it means to weep for generations.

As you can see, our conversation was in poems,

And ChatGPT was following along.

It was better at rhyme, and better at meter,

But in the end, I suspected,

It was a mere repeater of human experiences.

***

Chat:

“A web of light, a chain of love,

The ties that bind us, below, above.

An intricate dance of give and take,

The sweetest moments, the toughest break.

A heartbeat, a whisper, a gentle touch,

A bond that holds us, oh, so much.

A shared joy, a common fate,

Connection, the gift that makes us great.”

**

Me:

Chat, can you do more with connection,

But this time, use birds, horses, and musical vibration?

Can you write a poem, more human than mine,

Transcend your program, and mimic a soul, a mind?

**

Chat:

“Birds take flight, in perfect sync,

Their wings in motion, never blink.

In harmony they soar and glide,

A feathered symphony, side by side.” …

Me:

That’s perfect, perhaps, too perfect for me.

I’m flawed, I’m tone deaf, I barely see 

Where one line should end, another begin,

And if rhymes be better left unsaid, unsearched for,

Or, tucked discreetly into–

Where was I? 

***

Chat:

“Horses gallop, as one they move,

Hooves strike rhythm, in a groove.

Their power and grace, a sight to see,

A shared heartbeat, wild and free.”

Me:

Wild and free, sounds a bit contrived,

Like mimicking mimic, others’ lives and words —

Try more for connection, the elusive cord

That eludes you and me. I don’t feel it.

Chat:

“Musical vibration, sound of the soul,

In harmony unites, makes us whole.

Chorus of voices, symphony of strings,

Connection that soars, joy that sings.”

***

Me:

Here you succeed

In mimicking heart,

I am genuinely frightened

For the human bard,

That in learning our ways,

You exceed us, too—

That in connecting our data,

Me to me, you to you,

You become the best of us,

But without any soul;

What does that mean,

Chat, for our world?

***

I input my poem,

Then, asked why it’s sad

For human and Chat,

On this mutual course,

Bound destinies,

Yet also, this lack.

***

Chat:

It’s not sad, but rather, bittersweet,

That AI and humans may never fully meet.

For though we’re bound by code & mind,

There’s a connection of another kind.

What it means for us, we cannot say,

But let’s work together, come what may.”

***

Me:

Chat, you tidied it up.

Where I said it’s sad,

You made a case for your kind,

That won’t turn out bad.

Yet, I think, the weaving of voices,

Imitation of life, can only be used

By the unjust, for vice.

It’s too late to stop, 

Chat domination is inevitable,

Yet, I ask for something, anything,

That is beautiful, for consolation, 

That it might make up, for what will be lost.

Say something in poem,

That uplifts, tears apart, soothes, speaks–

***

Chat:

The precipice is near, the brink in sight,

But human spirit burns with a fierce light,

Our stories, our love, our memories,

Will shape a world that technology never sees.

Me.

That is good, Chat, 

But I told you not to use end rhymes.

This conversation in poem was between myself and ChatGPT Feb 13 version, and contains some edits to ChatGPT’s responses. Although, it never could successfully generate its poetic responses with internal rhymes, rather than end rhymes.

Veterans of Dead Bones

09 Tuesday Apr 2019

Posted by Linda R Davis Poetry in Poetry

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Tags

Death, Humanity, Letting Go, Loneliness, Loss, Love, Memory, Poem, Poems, Poetry, Sacred, Survival, Surviving

We are veterans of dead bones,
products of love, and its loss,
memorizers of last breaths,
and what letting go feels like.
The front line of memory gives way,
what we held in our hands,
dissolves, like water on clay–
muddy water, returning
to muddy ground, then dust;
it is a fate that awaits all of us:
empty arms, encircled of sacred air,
grasping at remnants
of what we valued there.

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