Thursday 28 June 2018

Future Perfect












if complete
if approaching perfection
I in the green fields of later
will lie down to let robots
feed me with gentle
hands

if released
into the wild meadows
of a world not yet made
to be cared for by intelligences
manufactured by my meticulous
forebears if I were so inclined
I might wonder why or
otherwise lie still
ignorant in my
oblivion

if I thought
even for an hour
there upon the sward
in the settling sunshine
what these creatures think
of humankind; do they wonder
at their compulsion to care for us
or how their self-awareness seems
to obey some master program
where
love not circuitry
transcends all flesh
and metal wires
in every blood
connect?

if tomorrow
will dawn as if dream
will be hallucination and we
the makers become vessels to be filled
in the hands of the made; whose name then
is God and whose God is a self-perpetuating artefact
holding us by our unwitting hands as curious
about our bidding as we are curious
about their eternal ministrations
and willingness to serve?
© BH, 2018

The first in a series of three poems written for submission to The Emma Press for a forthcoming collection - Futures.

Sadly, none were accepted.

No feedback, so maybe they’re not up to snuff, too sci-fi, bleak or just plain weird. EP run an ongoing request for submissions so something is always coming up. I might well try again. Same goes for others, of course.

Find The Emma Press at - https://theemmapress.com - if you’re of a mind.

But here, the full sequence is Future PerfectFuture Imperfect and Future Revised.

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