---
title: Funicular - recover.exe
url: https://www.halimmadi.com/singulars/recover-exe/funicular
description: "Funicular: one theme of recover.exe, two poems, one by the poet and one by the machine, unsigned. Read them and vote."
generated: 2026-10-19
---

# Funicular

## funicular.txt

trained

theme · recover.exe

Training is closed. Vote counts are final.

[recover.exe](https://www.halimmadi.com/singulars/recover-exe)

## vote.exe

2 poems · 9 votes

One poem is by a human, one is by a machine, and you are not told which. Pick the one you prefer, then submit your vote.

poem a

Up the mountain's spine we ratchet, two cars
roped to the same lie: that one falls
so the other may climb. My grandfather rode this
to the sanatorium, lungs full of Alpine glass,
and waved at the descending car as if waving
at himself, younger, going down. The cable hums
the only honest note - everything we lift
costs us something equal sinking. At the top
a café sells postcards of the view I'm in,
and I buy one, addressed to the man
still rising in me, still
believing the rope means up.

poem b

We're unsure why the Airbnb has 4 bedrooms
how Onomishi became a romantic destination
and if the city needed a funicular
for what could have been a staircase up to this hilltop
But the port cranes are bowing their necks
to the flushing dunking drunk sun the way I do
when sake colors your cheeks and I promise
another decade of watching sunsets

Vote on [the theme's page](https://www.halimmadi.com/singulars/recover-exe/funicular).