Astral Planes

In my dreams,
I often take off in astral form,
Cheered on by stadiums of stars,
Off like a spectral rocket,
As I soar through the cosmos,
Skip,
Zoom,
I take snapshots of the constellations,
Spying their empyrean forms,
Proving their fabled existence,
They dance sprightly about as I pass,
I’m an astrological tourist tonight,

I have flown so far already,
But there are more sights to see,
I stop for lunch upon the rings of Saturn,
Watching a show lightyears away,
A medical drama,
Starring the ministrations of Jupiter and Neptune,
They keep trying to revive Pluto,
Rambling onwards,
The sun is calling to me,
As I approach my eyes grow heavy,
The solar rays declare morning,
This astral vacation was over.

The Wisp

The bog is woken up,
The murkiest waters even animate,
Murk becoming effulgent,
That fell flame hovering there,
The waters surface reflects it,
Phosphorescent in its disquiet,
Like a canvas painted by ghosts,
Some machination of the spirit realm,

That dread light,
It’s a foreboding lighthouse in the black,
Offering not salvation,
But a watery grave,
Is it a ghost?
Is it purely folklore?
Or is there a more cogent cause?
Science offering some motive.

Cold Logic

Some minds only deal in binary,
Mechanical lizards piloting meat skeletons,
True or false,
These are the only options for these droids,
Logic taken to its cold conclusion,
Statistics taken a gospel,

Your heart,
Your feelings,
The colours that permeate your words,
These things produce hinderances,
Human factors are glitches,
They do not fit black and white,

To these walking computers,
There is the right solution and the unsound,
Only zeroes and ones,
There is no space for varied perceptions,
Your tears do not factor in,
To the single answer in their crosshairs.

Genius

Knowledge is a weapon they say,
A weapon to fight for the greater good,
But there is a another face to this coin,
In some hands it is abhorrent,
A tool turned on the good,
Genius can be malicious,

When a cranium takes a wrong turn,
And finds itself in a glade full of malcontent,
Like opening a new wing of a haunted manor,
It is the reptilian side of a mans brain,
Cold and unconcerned with feelings,
The greater the mind the greater the danger,

An anti-hero to oneself,
A villain to all others,
Conscience strung up in an evil lair,
All lasers and shark pits,
This is when an IQ level,
Becomes a terror level.

Skybox

I gaze skyward,
Drawn by some click of great decibel,
The sky above seems unearthly,
Almost to a virtual degree,
Whizzing my eyes left and right,
My periphery scratches the side of the monitor,

It feels unreal,
Like a blanket placed by some unsung creature,
The clouds skirt around dead pixels,
It seems fake,
Birds fly backwards,
Stuck in an aerial glitch,

It all looks digital,
Like the horizon has been hacked,
Or formed in some supernal studio,
What is this?
Where am I?
Is this life all some fault in the skybox?

Scorcher

The sun is a tyrant,
Thermometers were its heralds,
Yet we still opened our windows,
Below these beams of radiation do I reside,
And my willpower is stripped from me,
Melted down to perspiration,
Burned to cinders,
Scorched beyond recognition,

I am a wickerman,
Burned to X’s and O’s,
Sandcastles have become my skin,
Sweat has become my lifeblood,
My breath has become a menagerie of spices,
Made pink by the skys hatred,
I am scorched,
As are we all.

Doomsday Device

The human world is a machine,
Forcibly implanted into the flesh of the Earth,
Its blades feeding deep into ore and fauna both,
All gears and buzz saws,
Propellants and crude oil,
Skyscrapers and drills,
Crewed by billions of little viruses,
Arms-dealers and fuel barons all,
Giving this machine its relentless drive,

This human device is self-propagating,
Procreation is refuelling the machine,
Birth to coffin and back again,
Meat and fat and ribs,
Keeping that grinder chock-full,
Little darlings as high calibre rounds,
Piercing the planets chest cavity,
Heat death on the way,
An apocalypse by inches.

App Store

Over the electric waves,
We are told there’s an app for everything,
Little neon geists in our palms,
Portable cyclopes,
Programs for every dilemma,
Apps for every sin,

Trading your organs for stocks online,
There’s an app for that,
Losing the social graces of a real human,
There’s an app for that,
Gambling your final savings,
There’s an app for that,
Deviously seeking an alternative to our spouse,
There’s an app for that,

There’s apps for all sorts,
Candy and arsenic,
Biscuits and viruses,
We are androids joined at the wrist,
To these rectangular demons,
These apps.

Dead Space

Around me lies a void of dead space,
A cold vacuum,
An orbit of haunted shipwrecks and scrap debris,
Broken spacesuits and heartbroken asteroids,
A desolate astral barrier,
Silent and lonesome,
It’s between me and the cosmos of society,
Their planets are lightyears away,
Muted and hazy,

I don’t mind it though,
I shut off the oxygen valve myself,
Flushing myself out.

Pixels

The world is naught but pixels,
A video game,
A snuff film,
All high-definition screens,
No soul,
Just pretty graphics,
With stupefying fidelity,
As long as you don’t gaze too close,

If you do,
Expect to see the flaws of the world,
Electrical faults,
Dull non-player characters,
Shallow characters following ill-realised scripts,
The dead pixels,
Static that we all swim amongst,
Until our monitors breathe their last.