ADIEU

ADIEU

I died in my sleep

but even so
my alarm woke me
dragged me out of bed

one look out the window
showed me the world has changed

and I
    had said goodbye
to the me that I knew

which is when it dawned on me
that perhaps this
had something to do
with thought experiment

cat in a box
of which we can say nothing
unless collapse
of wave front

maybe this is all some
metaphysical reality
generated by
high-end
user
mathematics of Infinity

not forgetting
the sly contribution
of digital intelligence
and machine
creation
    about to break its bounds
about
   to go supreme

piece it all together
taking into evidence
a text
    like this, like
this
   text exactly

which could become
fully post-
human

write its audience sing

a universe to sleep

LEGACY

LEGACY

“It is your destiny!” Darth Vader, The Empire Strikes Back

at me again
about all the time
on my hands

call it
free time
(corporate
joke whose
     punchline I
don’t get)

spending time
killing time
      writing ace poetry
winning
   at Mah Jong

when I could be
working more profitably
making nuclear weapons

filling covering
the planet with them
to express
     my innate sense
of manifest destiny

fireworks display
for the ages as you
would have
             to agree

closest thing to the Big Bang
could me my huge legacy

WHOLE PACKAGE

WHOLE PACKAGE

this is my
          box

my beautiful package
devised, constructed, fabricated
to enhance,
         verify, verify, rectify
this most wonderful
of weapons

so many thousands pointed
at each other (every
megaton worth
millions)

so now we have
more than enough to go round
protection, satisfaction
for all
     no one to go needy
we guarantee you your share

so just put them in this box
here according to the wording
looks so nondescript
but it’s
marvellous, glorious I swear

look how eager it is
to embrace,
     sword-swallow each
pointed warhead

turn them into
art, sheer poetry, true
beauty
    as they disappear

somewhere, anywhere, nowhere
who gives a flying f where
they went to
      disappeared to

leaving us
cold and alone no hope
of
   final winter
ultimate prophecy

not the case with
all those
      other worlds in
their parallel universes

ours
    somehow surviving
beating impossible odds
of so
    doing, of our
contriving to do so

a blip
on a switch, screen
misread, word
mistranslated

they got the required treatment
the whole package as detailed

.
    

DANGEROUS

DANGEROUS

digital artificial
intelligence multiverse

everything permissible
everything possible

and so me
here reading my poems
to all manner of
philosopher
and literary genius

Mr Eliot and Ms Plath
touching my hand
passing
        suggestive comments

but
what can you do?
what dare you say?

better I get them to read me
proffer their insight

than ditch my standards
show
   them to you

who know
about everything so
precious little

particularly dangerous
what you think about poetry

strange
you should sport a sensibility
way below the levels
that
    seem to have
been approximated

in the lethally inspirational
evolution of
our machines

LOVE STORY

LOVE STORY

Not sure
what it was

if it is anything
you night call a
romance

a love
story

an orange cobra in the
short grasp
dancing for me
foot of the mountain
scales
catching the Sun

the grass grown tall now
no hope of that mixed
fear and
delight in once
more catching sight of her

turning serpent
myself
surrendering my life to her
my sweet
zero at the bone as
Ms Emily might
have
described her

whose young image it
will be
brought back from
all those years
ago

so lithe
so wise

as my eyes close
embracing darkness
with
a feeling
of love coiled up forever

full stop to everything.

MEMOIR

MEMOIR

you thought we
would be lightspeed at least

but its
all just bumper
to bumper
pay the man
stop
   and go

time to pull over
write a memoir
even if
a tyre not popped

be
good for you
good for
all of us

even if
not a single soul
ever bother to read it
.(no one
reading anything whole
thing in decline(

those that do
still read

well they
just dead already

this the crazy thing
about timelines in
realm of relativity

OR BY CROOK

OR BY CROOK

this poem
               is

unrefined
               raw

yet curiously
fine-tuned

nothing pre-cooked
or microwaveable about it

not so much
        drive through
as
   drive-by

not dead yet
still moving which

is pretty much understatement
for here it is
still
     gasping for air

thrashing about
on your table
your hook
        still dangling
from
  its fat mouth

and its hook
my hook

       shepherding its way
into yours via classic dis-
traction

you are going to know its there
wili
   have to come to terms with it.
live with it

though
    not feeling it yet

PETS

PETS

bad leg
two
bad
legs

thin
as stilts
once so strong

everything about me
progressive

incremental
transformative

alchemical
   would strut the boards
if could walk at all

need to
pray to AI

to halt this in its tracks
reverse the process
save
   my lineage

turn, as the advert says if
I do remember it rightly,
magnificent
    artistic portraits
into
loveable pets

nothing would ever
be so fanciful as awakening
the inclination
     to pet me
ever

so sorrowful my state
having exceeded my allotment
hit my deadline called
time
    on all of that

what thin
as a
    stalk now
down to a toothpick