dystopia – poems 2 die for

DENIAL

a bug clawed its way
in through my navel

hurt like hell
those titanium pincers

told me instantly
I had misread
my world
got it wrong

sometime in the past
this shift in
genre, everything
turning
science fiction

dystopian, not
the utopian kind, total shock
not nice surprise
in every bit
and byte of
its
dream logic

and you
curious, if not
at the limit of your anxiety,
to
know
the wherefores and whys
of this threshold reality

would be happy to explain,
conscious of the likelihood
of throwing you
into
a denial
from which you might
never escape

DRONE ON

drone on
drone on

meanwhile something
is screaming
from
Orwell’s grave

buzz buzz
something is
writhing
on Airstrip One
six feet under

terrible the agony
of a realized prediction
the text
meant as satire become
seer’s prediction

the text on this headstone
rewiring itself, mutating,
changing fast
as share prices

what was once
envisaged and
received
as far-
fetched dysopia
now
in clear
death spiral, cavorting
with extinction

the demise of the rationality
to see and believe

and you
with your
unique way
with words

insisting this is the way
sole species solution

to grasp that power
we gave to the heavens
we
ascribed to the cosmos

to rebuild everything in
singular
one
supreme image

droning on
droning on
(what left of
your intelligence
at best artificial)

inside
and ouside (both)

something is screaming
from George Orwell’s grave

WOBBLE

apologies
for the speed
wobble

but have got
fully pedal to the metal
watch them
all vanish
in the rear
view mirror

Plato, Aristotle
Jesus, Buddha, Nietzsche
all those great philosophies,
species dreams

fascism, dystopia,
cyborg reality, looming up
ahead
trying to
millionaire there
quantum disentangle, hit
light speed if possible

all a blur
crazy psychedelic sensation

soon
you will
feel the doom

really get
to the core

be one
with the rule
of iron
over chaos

ride the great wave
final seismic shift

SLAVOJ FEARS

Slavoj fears
the prospect of Elon
drilling deep into
our brains

like we are all
a Witwatersrand goldmine

sticking us
with a tiny chip

does everything
portal to Heaven

teeny tiny
quantum clever

but titanic screen and
monumental keyboard

who knows what tune
the future will play, how
will dance
to how we are played

SCENARIO

I woke up from a dream
that was a stupendous
creation
of pure
sciene fiction terror

people, experts, scientists
or they
might just have
been machines

sticking needles into
my brain to deposit
microscopically tiny
pre-programmed
devices of
nano-technology

instructed to conduct
a search and destroy mission

to erase the possibility
of thought patterns that
might
contrive to imagine
some scenario
like this.

OH YOU CYBERPUNK REBELS

Oh you
cyberpunk rebels
hot stuff
thorn in the side
mote in the eye
of all our dystopian futures

we love you now but
we are fickle, we
are controlled

power
snaps its fingers
and we come running
would come running
if we did
have legs
to stand on were
allowed mobility
at this futurepoint in time

and so
a slight change in inclination
here
twist in attitude
what was reverence
admiration now
condemnation, call
for extermination

getting
hacked to pieces
everything that hacked in

and here you lie
according to plan
you
on the table
plan what to do with you
on the table

somewhere inside all that
soft, lovely humanity,
a resource for
harvesting

requires brutal reaping

will be livestreamed.

SPRING CLEAN

wish I was young enough
and close enough geographically
to join you in
your protest encampment

a swatch of colour, a carnival
vibe, foregrounded against
the grey architectural
ersatz imitation of things
Athenian that marks
your alma mater’s
mode of academic being

the joy of community,
diversity
and alternate, far more
utopian
student perspectives

is not a thing to be tolerated
by a militaristic, utterly confused
and confounded, imperialistic regime
you just so happen
to call home

you are subjecting to a fantastic
targeted spring cleaning

throwing out the old
that you do not need
that all
too painfully
does not fit in

NEON

darkness has a logic
for every logic
an anti-logic

but
let us forget this
and proclaim
a realm
of Neon

neon blossoming
on trees of perspex and plastic
glass abd steel

in the rain
these flowers
beyond perfect
in a
forest of neon
such enchanted being

no one will have need of
darkness
the very

thought of
darkness
for whatever reason
ever again

WITHOUT EXAGGERATION

this poem
may,
without exaggeration,

be
the death
of me

even as I write
artificial minds
are reading
between the lines

which lines do not exist
since all
is dust, is code,
is wll that flickers
between
death
and infinity

this I do confide
as we approach a turnstile

time for anxiety should
cards
not be in order
should there be
no automatic passage

from desert
on one hand
to circus on the other

with such
an outside and inside

precipice, blade
of razor

all destined
to endure

system
is forever

our salvation our doom

this poem, without exaggeration,
taking the very life from me