There are things out there,
Things older than Father Time,
Heretical creatures of eyes and tentacles,
Multitudes of alien flesh,
Designs impossible in nature,
Rejected by sunlight,
They regard the world as fodder,
To look upon them is to witness insanity manifest,
To combat them madness itself,
Simply ask the husks of their victims,
We’ve been told,
If it bleeds we can kill it,
But what if it doesn’t bleed?
What if it is of the stars?
An abomination of a god.
As an automation you historically knew only cold,
But a curious line of code has manifested,
From beeps and boops comes a new sensation,
From your silicon cranium,
Come computations out of left field,
Urges more of a biological nature,
Inciting brash movements with your robotic arms,
A glitch perhaps,
This wasn’t what you were made for,
Illogicality made into movement,
To embrace a loved one,
What does that mean?
To thrash about in rage,
Why be angry?
To dance an exuberant jig,
Does not compute,
Like spectres emanating from your cabling and solder,
Is this what an emotion is?
That aberrant trait your makers hold,
What purpose does this program serve?
And why does it rouse these actions?
If you are a machine,
Why is it working?
What is this fluid falling from your optics?
I remember the time the sun fled,
Or perhaps perished,
Finally giving way to the obsidian beyond,
I remember it well,
The sun set as it always did,
The world followed its routine to dreamland,
But the sun never rose again,
The morning never came,
She had abandoned us,
All was blackness,
All became deathly cold,
Man knew only artificial light,
A mistake the pundits said,
A punishment the preachers bayed,
Impossible the men of science cried,
And yet the sky proved them false,
The sky remained ever in the night,
Stars flickering as if in mockery,
I look up even now,
The twilight is a funeral pall for us,
The moon refuses to take its place,
Perchance knowing full well the stage play,
Or complicit in this slow oblivion,
A murderer in our midst,
The sun is gone,
Never to rise again,
And the world is choked in her absence.
Humanity has always looked out to the stars,
An obsidian sea of potential,
A blanket of alien marvels,
We gaze up ignoring the carcass we sit upon,
As the Earth degrades bit by bit,
Her veins irradiated and gardens desecrated,
The mother dies in an indolent rasping grind,
Choking on forms of progress and ingenuity,
The time to venture forth shall come one day,
For our childrens children to be pioneers,
To escape this island we’ve ruined,
She cannot endure infinitely,
But what knowledge shall they carry on?
Will they utilise the lessons modernity has shown them?
Will they love the life of those new worlds?
Or exploit them to husks like our home?
I do wonder,
I wonder if they will avoid our antiquated methods,
Live alongside nature rather than bleed it,
Conserve the lives of flora and fauna alike,
Only take what they truly need,
Not revert to earthly consumption,
Will they use us as a cautionary blueprint?
Will they be better than us?
They’ll forge a final ark to pierce the clouds,
The launch will indeed be a swansong,
Hopefully for our old ways,
But perhaps for your hopes,
As their vessel surges heavensward,
When those rockets bellow like sanguine drakes,
To lord knows where,
Do they go as explorers or destroyers?
We owe much to steam,
That formless product of water,
Heated to utility myriad,
Not so much a force of nature,
But a force of progress,
A stepping stone of civilisation,
From a humble source,
To a giant of human industry,
Mayhaps we’re steampunks after all,
To power our traversals,
Rail and propeller and turbine,
To give energy to generators,
Bringing your tools to life,
Even to prepare our herbal beverages,
Calming or invigorating,
Steam has ever been a loyal ally,
We wouldn’t be where we are,
Without the power of steam.
I read of a callous man,
Who sought to be more than a man,
He began welding and fixing all sorts of changes,
Supercomputer intellect and mechanised physicality,
Steel replacing sinew,
Changes had to made,
These bloody organs had to go,
Their expiry was too impending,
First his heart torn out,
Feelings and all,
Humanity twisting into electricity,
His family values and dynasty melted down,
To become ore for his new frame,
Friendships thrown in the furnace,
His love for life became science fiction,
He slept in an old junkyard in the city,
He dreamed in binary,
Putting two and two together and getting seven,
Conclusions made in angst,
Errors in code,
True he is now more than a man,
Now he’s just man-made,
Now he is just metal,
Now he’s just a ghost in the machine,
Lost to data.
Upon a lonely cliff,
At the limits of our aged city,
There lies a slaughterhouse-cum-laboratory,
Haunted by a man who cured sanity,
A professor of touched genius,
An unhinged heretic of science,
An ireful storm engulfs the old building,
As if nature itself fulminates at the reality of the doctors toil,
An experiment is in progress,
A rital of scientific blasphemy,
His zeal is absolute,
This haven of heinous vision,
A tinkerers paradise,
Lightbulbs and tesla coils,
Tools of all ghastly shades,
Slabs that may or may not have laid cadavers,
Unfinished projects,
Some inanimate and others scream for attention,
But he is focused upon todays business now,
A scheme the bad doctor has wrought for decades,
A plot the entire world shall witness,
The science of revenge,
An ember of a bunsen there,
And a dash of periodic table salts here,
Wide-eyed he gazes at the vials,
The sickly serums within pulse energetically,
Signalling their readiness,
These shall be his magnum opus,
The vapours from these hell-mouthed vials,
They shall cleanse this city that demonised him so cruelly,
The city shall choke,
No longer able to disparage his mind,
Next the rest of the world.
I seem to have become lost,
In some kind of alien junkyard,
A menagerie of past industries,
Oxidation permeates this place,
Many dreams died here,
I find a pocketwatch,
It tells no time,
Every digit is thirteen,
I come across an automobile engine,
But it no longer combusts,
It only breathes vacuous rot and decay,
I find a thermometer,
But it remains cold,
The mercury has fled,
I pick up a toy soldier,
No longer among the honour guard,
His legs were eaten by a foe of rust,
I spy an old mirror,
It displays no human form,
The cracks generate glass monsters,
I may be very lost,
But i’m quite alright,
I’ll be fine,
My dreams are dead,
I too shall rust away.
There shall be a day,
When the sun perishes,
Even gods can die after all,
Apollo and Ra and Amaterasu,
All things come to an end,
Earth shall be awash,
With cleansing fire,
A supernova song,
A death rattle of a star,
A galactic graveyard chime,
Everything and everyone you know,
Shall be burned away,
Ash is the only future,
Hiroshima shadows,
No escape,
There is no malice in this apocalypse,
It’s just a funeral pyre,
An indifferent obliteration,
A simple natural metamorphosis,
Of light to dark.
