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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 automaton 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?
