Anthem & Alchemy


26

So this was Earth
Handfuls of light
Europe on reverb
Beaches covered with
Ancient jars like

Star-shells fragrant
With some golden empire
From which they came
I saw young bodies
Throbbing breasts

Heart-beats of infinity
Shells rose-pink
A blur of traffic
So this was Evolution
In the minds of

Organics where
Drifted thoughts
Of arms spread open
For the coupling of desire
These youth who

Would one day pair off
And the sky’s veins
Would not recall
Who was with who
Or how children came

Each has no handles
The waves touch
The pebbles each time
They curl on to the shore
Like time, formed by clay

They gather tools to
Change themselves
Civilized barbarians
Becoming barbaric once again
So this was Earth

I’d heard the stories
Souls that could not
Be unmade, they learned
And grew somehow
In a software of

Reincarnation, I knew
Their minds emptied
Death was beautiful
A simple reset and
And the slaughter of

Selfishness, what a sight
Wheat doesn’t take long
To ripen, sex doesn’t
Take long to become
But a whisper in a life

Desires melt away
Attachments drift
Hopes once so vital
Seemed secondary
Each dream separately

Lulled, like the birds
Who cry at morning
Going quiet, at the coming
Of the Sun, it was
Just natural, and perfect.

Age of the Quantum Machines


[a true science-fiction poem]

29

Angels hailed that solemn hour
The breath of man transferred
To machine, a little more
Each decade, until
Bioeugenics, discrimination

Against organics, the weak
Without cognitive implants
Heavens dissolved in tongues of fire
AIs owned stocks, corporations
Became the property of supercomputers

Concede then the victory, old humanity
To your children, not your natural heirs
But the inheritors of your ruin
Of your bioweapons, Ebola
Of your hypocrisy, climate change

Of your wealth seeking, inequality
Not yet my son’s distracted eyes
Could meet his fate among the
Congress of Quantum entities
These were the turning years

Where man’s destiny ended
The rise of Cyborgs, Enhanced humans
And the monopoly of a more
Advanced civilization breaking away
From the old, evolution’s funny
Little Epilogue, hardly a surprise
To the transhumanistic philosophers.

30