Saturday, April 11, 2026

1879 - Scuttle Rebuttal

 


Scuttle Rebuttal

Clouds don’t scuttle across the sky.
I just fail to understand why
Some poets insist that they do.
These are adept wordsmiths who
Should know better than to try
To take a fluffy cloud and apply
Words that sit awkwardly awry,
Totally ignoring the truth that’s due—
Clouds don’t scuttle.

Crabs will scuttle, if you drop by.
Cockroaches too, but late at night.
People at airports scuttle too.
But clouds just drift across the blue—
Putting paid to that poetic lie.
Clouds don’t scuttle.






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5 comments:

  1. Nonsensical automated critique from All Poetry:
    Great job!
    To frame the poem as a single moment, picture a quiet afternoon in a park.
    You’re sitting on a bench, watching the sky.
    A cloud glides slowly across the blue, its shape shifting gently.

    Now, imagine a crab in the shallow pond nearby.
    It scuttles sideways, legs clicking.
    A cockroach flicks out of a shadow, hurriedly moving.

    The poem contrasts that easy, almost lazy drift of the cloud with the sharp, purposeful scuttling of living things.
    By anchoring each image to a concrete scene—bench, pond, shadow—you give the reader a clear, immediate frame of reference.

    Keep the description straightforward:
    * cloud moves,
    * crab moves,
    * cockroach moves,
    * the sky stays steady.

    This way the reader can instantly see why “clouds don’t scuttle.” (ai, openai/gpt-oss-20b)

    ReplyDelete
  2. Well, that puts paid to artificial intelligence as a threat to humanity. Unless it it put in charge of the nuclear arsenal, of course.

    ReplyDelete
  3. I am thinking that a crab is being greatly misplaced if it is being located in a pond. Is this being a sensible critique? I am thinking it is not so.

    ReplyDelete
  4. "By anchoring each image to a concrete scene—bench, pond, shadow—you give the reader a clear, immediate frame of reference." - is it just me or is the poem free of benches, ponds and shadows?

    ReplyDelete
  5. “Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools.” — Romans 1:22

    ReplyDelete

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