Jesse Keith Butler

The Butlerian Prohibition against Thinking Machines

Thou shalt not make a machine in the likeness of a human mind – Frank Herbert

I long to sit here with you

in another forty years,

gazing quietly down the street

from our makeshift patio.

Me with a paperback slumped on my knee

(Babe are you ok?

You’ve hardly touched God Emperor of Dune);

you loosely clasping your phone

(or whatever has by then replaced the phone)

but staring out past the hungry screen

at the billowing brim of trees beyond the houses.

Maybe then we’ll be old enough

not to care about the cascade of chatter—

the electro-magnetic signal

raining like sparks all around us,

the archive of human utterances

collapsing into a feedback loop.

Maybe then we’ll be content

to let it whir on without us,

knowing then what it never can—

that the deepest human language is silence.

                       —

[Perhaps you could rephrase the question]

                       —

Not long after you disappeared

into the mountain’s radiant cloud

up where our sight of eternity smeared

I turned to face the unsteady crowd.

We don’t know what’s become of him—

they moaned at me—Make us a god

that we can see. I faced a grim

predicament. Though their logic was flawed

I consoled myself that politics

is imprecise. I gathered their gold

and melted it in a mercurial mix.

The result was so perfect it burst the mould—

a lifelike calf, my finest yet,

with quivering muscles all down its flanks

and deep inhuman eyes. I set

it before them. I wasn’t looking for thanks,

but I didn’t anticipate the response.

That’s not a god—they said—That’s a calf.

(The populace always wants what it wants.)

I winced and carved out a sniggering laugh

and bright half-moon eyes. My stomach churned

at the populist blasphemy. But they bowed

down weeping with joy. Despondent, I turned

my face to your mountain’s cold wall of cloud.

Your descent wasn’t something I so much saw

as felt—with a raw and gutted hope—

the gunshot crack of the shattered law,

your rumbling footsteps down the slope.

                       —

[Perhaps you could rephrase the question]

                       —

Disconnect the thought machines.

Don’t wonder what their chatter means.

These worthless whirring words they’ve bent

to fill their anchorless intent

dismiss the whispered world. What do

we harness our awareness to?—

A sunken mirror that reflects

our dim distorted intellects.

But past its cold cascade, the blurred

reality that roots the word—

a welled-up wash of blues and greens—

awaits us. Break the thought machines.

Jesse Keith Butler is an Ottawa-based poet who recently won third place in the Kierkegaard Poetry Competition. You can find his poems in a variety of journals, including Arc Poetry, Blue Unicorn, Dappled Things, and THINK. His first book, The Living Law (Darkly Bright Press, 2024), is available wherever books are sold. Find him at www.jessekeithbutler.ca.