The birds perched on the powerlines
little musical notes
People sped by in their exoskeletal suits
hands-on wheels and eyes on their pursuits
Weeds grew toward the sun
only opening when the rays would meet them
A man sped by with a mower
and the flowers bled pollen
The birds sang songs of blood and sex
a territorial language penetrating the sky
Traffic lights glowed red
as did the embers of time
Another sunset
before the next sunrise
I always watch their teeth the news anchors, standing beside a ruin and wonder what they last bit into as the TV screen eats me up into the bad news that grinds my brain to mush
I like to write short
and to the point
come to think of it
that makes my writing a mirror image
of my short-arsed self.
Death will blow my breath away
one day
Sooner than most
so they say
But
Perhaps a fascist takeover
will kill me
‘fore my heart wins out
and pulls me to the ground
It was a hollow cry, for no one could ease the pain. She howled into the night, and he bellowed from the other side.
The crescent of the moon was spangled through the bare branches of the trees; winter had come too soon, that was what Blaze believed, but Willow said this was the way of things now.
Life was becoming death in an endless winter.
Blaze had asked Willow if she couldn’t try putting a more optimistic spin on things, but Willow said she lived truthfully; an optimistic spin would be a lie.
‘Are we to blame?’ Blaze had asked Willow.
Willow slumped down against the rotting trunk of a willow tree, ‘No.’ Willow said.
And Blaze could only believe her because she wouldn’t sugarcoat the truth.
‘Is it anyone’s fault?’
Willow looked around at the cracked earth beneath her feet; the sun was ablaze in the sky, but winter’s soul had shrouded the earth with only shadows of ghosts. And so no matter how much that sun provided its heat, the mass extinction had done its thing. And yes, one day, maybe, life would find its way again, but for now, all that was left was the debris of homosapiens.
Plastic yoghurt pots rolled across the barren land like tumbleweeds, plastic wrapped tightly around the bones of some long-lost animal suffocated from the very plastic that now waved in the wind.
‘I have found you,’ Blaze had told Willow as he held her against the stump of the tree, ‘and so you have found me.’
Willow had smiled sadly up into his broken stare. The lights of his eyes had long gone out, as had her own.
‘Let’s let ourselves go,’ Willow said softly to him, ‘together.’
‘But I thirst for life.’ Blaze had protested.
‘We will thirst forever.’ Willow’s neck creaked as she lowered her eyes.
Blaze held her tighter in his arms, ‘The sun gives us life; we are living.’
‘This is not living, Blaze.’
Willow loosened herself from his arms, ‘Take out my solar panel.’ Her neck creaked as she craned it to look back at Blaze.
‘I…I can’t.’ Blaze said.
‘You can.’
Blaze began to whir, his head shook, ‘No! No! No! No!’ His left eye drooped, and a shard of loose glass dropped onto the cracked earth.
Since that day, a gulf had separated them. Blaze wandered about the cracked, parched plains marching northward on the same journey the trees had tried to make. The scorched bark of trees flaked and clung to their skeletal remains.
Blaze ripped a flake of bark and crushed it in his hands; a poem sought itself out in the through the mess of his electronic neurosis:
I am a refugee marching north on the wind
hoping my seed will disperse
far enough to traverse
these boundaries that will surely kill me
my roots are not fed
and there is no life left
but the wound that has bled
into the rivers
tricking down into the earth.
I could have shaded you from the sun
and thus the wind and the cold
but you let the blood run
never mind the lives slain
all for your fear of death.
Does irony feed you and quench your thirst?
When will you march with the skeletal remains of us?
And it was then that he heard the great despair taking wing into the air. The hollow cry of a humanoid who had torn her solar panel, the dying embers opened her lips, and the cry rang out through the plains of extinction.
Blaze bellowed back, and the moon’s crescent looked on, indifferent.
If only I was a balloon
you could let go
and I could fall up
till snared by the branch of a tree
there I could hang free.
My despair has me embroiled
in so much deceit
staying alive
only for people to reach
This isn’t a life worth living
resentment is the moon
propelling the tides in my head
only sticking around
so others don’t have to think me dead
trying to die within
so I can be an animated memory
for those who claim me.
Let words fall from my lips
as empty as they may be
dead inside, but they won’t have to see
What can I say
I’m trying to stay
but how I hope something takes me away
I will take him into my mouth
to swallow this dirty truth
that innocence was only ever illusion
we were born as much of the dirt
as the water that cleanses us
in this cannibalistic earth
even if love does not mark the skin
only animalistic ruin
there is nothing more tender
than fucking.
I love the earth no more than I love myself
I want to eviscerate myself
as much as we have the earth
I want to kill the skeleton in my skull
gnashing its teeth
like a ghost without a home
masticating on its lonesomeness
in nightmares kept for times like this
I want to spill my guts
but the blade won’t cut deep enough
because, to be blunt
I’m a superficial cunt
Everything deflates me
including the rise of the sun
and in the air, writes the total sum
absolutely nothing
Dear Friends,
How are things on earth?
The other day the Mammamarians put me into a bubble-shaped cart that hung from a steel wire.
And with great speed it travelled along the rope till it came to a halt that felt to me just in the nick of time, as just inches away from where it stopped was a perilously tall building that looked to be made of graphite.
And once I overcame my shock from being in new surroundings and the movement and near crash of my cart, I saw a vast network of tall buildings like the one I had stopped by before me.
There were no windows or doors on these buildings, none that a man’s eye could see anyhow.
But at once, a hole opened up in front of me, and my bubble cart moved slowly through the hole.
The hole instantly closed behind me, and I was inside the graphite tower!
And many small Mammamarians ran up and down little ladders and over many, many landings like boobacious spiders!
My ball cart moved with a slow precision as another hole opened up. I was back outside, on the other side of the building.
And the speed returned with force forcing my face up against the glass; my nose squashed against it.
The cart came to a sudden halt just as it did the first time, and after a moment or two of waiting, a hole opened up, and the cart slowly entered.
And once I entered the building, the cart started free-falling!
And down I went, my heart beating violently against my chest and my eyes no doubt bulging from my head in terror!
My hands against the glass, I screamed, my fingers trailing through the fog of my breath on the window.
And then there was a wailing sound like a crying baby.
The more I screamed, the louder the crying became, as if competing with me.
The ball cart luckily came to a halt when a giant metal hand grabbed hold and connected us back up to another steel wire.
A hole opened up in the wall before me, and the bubble cart entered a room that looked like any other room you might see in a house back home!
That was when I saw the source of the wailing: a baby in a cot, arms above their head and legs up in the air.
Next to the cot was a space currently behind drawn curtains.
Would you like to hazard a guess as to who was behind the curtains?
Well, if it wasn’t Alice!
‘My god!’ I recall myself saying, ‘Alice! Where have you been…’ But as the words escaped my mouth, it dawned on me, ‘The baby is yours?’ hoping my shock didn’t afflict my face.
Alice smiled that wistful smile, the same smile I saw her lips bear last time, ‘It is our baby,’ She said, holding out her hand. ‘Come on,’ She said.
I grabbed her hand, and she spun me back to face the baby in the cot.
‘I thought you were…’ I looked down at the baby’s feet which were up in the air, ‘I thought you were an android.’ I gulped.
‘I am.’ Alice replied.
‘But,’ I pointed at the baby, ‘How?’
‘I have an artificial womb.’
Can you believe that? An artificial womb in an android?
I never expected to have a child, what with mainly fucking men and rarely being able to orgasm if I slept with a woman.
Not to mention that back on earth, back on that sweet blue, green home, I was told by a doctor that my swimmers weren’t very…well up for swimming, quite frankly!
I looked at Alice, stunned! ‘How…But I..’
‘We had to help your little guys out a bit.’ She smiled.
‘Yea?’ I said, picturing sperm with armbands on like a cartoon.
‘Don’t worry about it. The fact is, now you have a little daughter!’
Well, what indeed was I supposed to say to that?
‘I know you’re in shock.’
‘Shock? That’s….That’s an understatement. I’m horrified.’
‘You don’t like your daughter?’ Alice asked, a look of disdain on her android face.
I looked down at the baby in the cot, but my brain could not compute that this little ball of flesh and bone was my child, my daughter.
‘I don’t know that I believe any of this is real,’ I replied finally.
‘Pick her up, hold her.’ Alice said in an enchanting voice.
I swallowed my scepticism, which went down my throat like a frog.
I picked up the little bundle of flesh and bone, and the baby spread her fingers out on her little hands, looked up at me and with salty tears making tracks down her face from the crying, she smiled up at me.
I put her hand in mine, and it felt real.
But so did Alice. So did Spoon.
‘What are we going to call her?’ Alice asked.
‘We?’ I looked at her, the babies hand still in mine.
‘Yes, we.’ Alice tilted her head and looked at me like I was an alien. Under the circumstances, I couldn’t help but laugh a little at that.
‘Well, she should take your surname.’
Alice smiled, ‘And her first name?’
‘I don’t know!’ I baulked and put the baby back in the cot.
‘Aww look, she’s going to sleep now she’s seen her daddy!’ Then Alice crept as quietly as possible towards me and put a hand on the small of my back, ‘Shall we go to bed now and try to get some sleep?’ She said, with a yawn, pushing on my pack to usher me behind the curtains.
So that’s all the latest news for you! I’m out of the fish tank, and now it seems like playing ‘happy families’ with Alice somewhere on this boobacious planet!
Yours faithfully,
Holden Mcgroin.
