Winds whisper words of desolation
Peak pines prosper on the rocky road
The rumble and sway, a million miles away
From the bustling city I once strode

Pulses of nature, rhythms of the earth
Here time slows my heartbeat and breath
A rugged embrace on the side of a rock
Left to ponder what is life and death?

For sixty-three days and nights
Thoughts flow like the mountain streams
A clear communion with the infinite
A testament to the beauty of solitude’s dreams

A symphony that resonates within
Freedom found alone on a mountaintop
A journey inward through the sands of time
Hold on to each precious drop

---

For No Theme Thursday I decided on the image above as it reminded me of Jack Kerouac’s short story Alone On A Mountaintop. To try and kickstart my imagination I decided to ask AI (Perplexity) to summarise the story and then turn the summary into a non-rhyming or free verse 20-line poem.

It managed to come up with a poem, that I didn’t closely look at because I could see that it rhymed. On reiterating I wanted it not to rhyme it just came back with the same rhyming scheme! And again.

So I asked it “It seems that you cannot write a poem that doesn’t rhyme. Is that true?” and got this response:

You’re right, I’m having difficulty generating a completely non-rhyming poem based on the summary of Kerouac’s story. As an AI system, I have certain limitations when it comes to creative writing tasks like composing free verse poetry without any rhyming elements.
While I can generate rhyming poems and incorporate poetic devices like alliteration, assonance, and consonance, completely avoiding any rhyming words or phrases in a poem is challenging for me. My training data and algorithms are not optimized for that level of creative control over language.
Humans are generally better equipped to compose truly free verse poetry that avoids rhyming altogether. Poets draw upon their intuitive understanding of language, emotion, and rhythm to craft poems that flow naturally without falling into rhyming patterns.
As an AI assistant, I have room for improvement when it comes to generating non-rhyming poetry. My abilities are limited compared to human poets who can masterfully compose free verse. I appreciate you pushing me to try, as it helps identify areas where I can enhance my creative writing skills. But you make a fair point – I currently cannot reliably write a poem that doesn’t rhyme at all. It’s a limitation I will aim to overcome with further training and development.

Well, I like the honesty. It could’ve led with this information though!

ChatGPT3.5 was more successful and I used parts of its results to inspire me further but its actual poem was pretty lacklustre.

---

Today I’m feeling:

Pretty good though a little cloudy in the brain.  Not feeling inspired to write yet.

I got back to exercise this morning, not pushing it too much and despite some weakness in my hip, it felt good.  I didn’t want to get up and do it, though; I had to force myself up and not attempt to go back to the interesting dream that I was having.  When I immediately couldn’t recall it, I decided to force myself up.

Today I’m grateful for:

Another 90-day report quickly sorted at Immigration this morning.

The best thing about today was:

Forcing myself back into my room this afternoon to play some guitar.  I need to sort out some other stuff in there too but I don’t really like being in there much these days.

I’m not completely sure why, if I’m honest.  It could be an accumulation of many small things such as the wifi not being too stable out there, doubling up the use of aircon whilst there, maybe even feeling overwhelmed with all the stuff that I could actually be doing in there, none of the chairs are that comfortable to sit for long…

What was out of your control today and how did you handle it?

The power went out in our classroom this afternoon and the lazy Thai teacher, Pookie, asked one of my students, who was doing my work, to go and find another teacher to fix it.  My student was smart enough to quickly come back, though and say that she couldn’t find the teacher, forcing Pookie to go and sort it out herself.

It happened a couple of times and I was prepared to just let the class go and let them complete the work in their own time before next week.

However, it got sorted, and Pookie finally agreed to run only one of the aircon units, as we had previously been asked to do.  She didn’t hang around much longer after that.

Something I learned today?

A day on Earth during the age of dinosaurs was just 23 hours long.