This piece is my favourite to date. With a little inspiration from Thomas Hardy and Richard Brautigan (you know how much I love him!), I have created my own sci-fi poem.
The key theme: REFLECTION.
We sometimes forget how simple we are, and at the same time; how complex. We don't always take responsibility for our own actions and I have attempted to utilise poetry to portray this.
All that glitters.
All that
glitters is not gold,
The cliché
of straw that broke Iron Man’s back;
The meaning
of life as we know it.
No amount of
machinery can change this concept,
No lump of
cold, metal mass that
Despite its
hard angles and razor-sharp edges,
Always runs
smoothly;
An
electrical flow that resembles a heady liquor,
Poured over
neat cubed ice,
Directly
into the mains,
Blowing up
our generation.
Tobor came
to life,
A tale not
dissimilar to Shelley’s.
Slow, rigid
raise of the arm,
Chunky metal
clanking noises surround us;
Shackles
dragging across the lab floor,
The representation
of our world as we know it;
Desire for
achievement,
Lust for
adventure,
Passion for
creation;
Falls to the
ground,
Lays in a
crumpled heap of atomic energy
Held together
with chunky bolts.
Gloopy metallic
glue
Trickles
from its steel limbs.
It’s alive!
We are dead
(or at
least, I hope we are!)
And our
blood dribbles into pools
On this
liquid-resistant ground.
Tobor and
other robotic monsters of the world
Unite to
break the peace that man always dreamed of achieving,
Yet somehow
never accomplished.
If the
serenity of the human race were never there,
Should we
question its existence?
A
decomposing generation,
Consumed by
worms,
But its ok
(I think);
I have never
known a robot
With a sense
of smell.
The
heartless beasts of productivity
Will step
over us in our earthy burial;
The mud will
not cling to their stainless steel soles,
But will always
cling to ours.
Once we’re
squished into gammy piles of human jam,
Trodden into
the once-fertile ground,
We’ll make
room for nostalgia,
For our
memories;
The
credentials of the humankind.
I wonder if
Earth’s temperature will plummet,
And they’ll
exist in an arctic land,
For they
shall not appreciate a cool ice-tea
In the
summer heat of their back gardens.
Instead (one
can only imagine)
That they
will live amongst man-made materials,
Ones built
to avoid destruction.
The irony is
palpable to us
(Even though
we’ll be dead!)
Yet is so
indistinguishable to them,
Who’s emotions
run no deeper than
A shallow
puddle of oil that we created
To maintain
their controlled existence
And fluidity
of their movement.
The bottom
line of it all;
Man created
destruction.
The
imbalance of the beautiful,
Unforgivably
witty oxymoron
Can only
define us now we have ceased.
We can only
wonder whether
Robots were
programmed to engrave our headstones
And allow
that line to mock the death of our Race-
(That’s
assuming they would ever even give us that respect!).
Man could
claim that they owe us everything,
Yet failed
to remind them of this
When he
fixed their wiring to ‘control-self’.
Is it
embarrassing
That we’ve
so gladly handed our lives
Over to a
hand colder than ice?
Should we be
ashamed
That the
£60,000 car we designed
Ends the lives
of thousands of people every year?
Consideration
for mankind,
Lost in an
Apple Mac’s programming-
Our souls already
sold to social media.
Of course,
Robots have
not yet taken over the world as we know it,
Physically.
Expecting to
witness demonic monsters
Patrolling
the streets late at night;
The
stereotype drilled into us
(drilled-
the irony!)
Yet this has
not yet been achieved.
Our eyes are
not able to observe such horrors,
The irony is
so blatant!
Absorbed in
ourselves too much to consider
Our own
reflections;
Beneath our
soft skin and bio-degradable shells
Lie the
monsters that we so fear.
Man is
robot.
We are
ultimately
The beasts
that will terminate us.
