Cleverbot is a web-based application which builds its vocabulary and its repertoire of phrases from “conversations” held with real people. It learns new word associations each time text is entered. Effectively, Cleverbot becomes a messenger service that transcends time and space, a sort of Lake House for the internet. In the following, Cleverbot has been employed to assemble a brand new and, dare we say, exquisite poem; the bot serves as a middle-man in collaboration with two disparate figures. The words of King David have been selected from Psalm 144 with the help of a random number generator, as have those of Rodney Dangerfield, culled from his autobiography.

 
LORD, I Get No Respect

LORD, what are human beings that you care for them,
Humans are like the lilies of the field; they toil not, neither do they sin
for an hour and talk–not that we ever had much.

Tens of thousands in our fields
No. Goodnight.
My mother took me back to her place in Jamaica, Queens.

Mere mortals that you think of them?
Sometimes? Always. They haunt me.
I was jealous of the dog, so they got rid of me.

Carved to adorn a palace.
Explain what?
Roy was my father; Arthur was my Uncle Bunk.

Then our sons in their youth
What do you think?
And give me some change, I’d say, “Thank you.”