BAHAMAS

You are my Bahamas,
My land of promiscuous promise,
My exotic erotic erratic-ecstatic strange land,
One of the many unrealistic hopes of my life.
If I could have you, all would improve,
I dream.
I suit your shores as the single-anchored boat that drifts about with the tides.
Your morning glories cover wild bush in vines,
Unpotted, ungreenhoused, unnurtured, untrained, unrestrained.
Droughts are real, with months without rain;
I watch a small rainstorm that comes up and passes nearby.
And real rain washes the soil from the fields and the lawns to the sea,
And storm waves smash up high over cliffs and flood roads.
And in heat-shrill summer
One strip of a palm frond clatters in no breeze
And casuarinas stroke the stillest skies
Most delicately.

Published: Candelabrum, UK, October 2007

POST-HUMAN

On the graphed time-descent of years since birth -
The time-line of my life from birth to present -
The initial line dividing life from nothing
Hangs like a thunder-cloud atop my life
Dividing ME from Ancient History
(That rumored world, alleged before I lived)
And threatens dispossession once again
Through final death if I should make one slip
In seeking to survive to the New Age:
The genome-driven world of nanotech
Which will allow my line to drop forever
Beyond humanity, across starred gulfs,
Into a Universe-wide consciousness:
The interlinked intelligence of all.

Published: Ambit 190, UK, October 2007

BEAT THIS LEVEL

Forget that crap about some God or Devil –
You’re on your own against the Universe;
But till you’re free of our Stage One’s perverse
Orientation, you won’t beat this level.
The Heaven idea is fraudulent, and worse:
Father McKenzie wields a deadly shovel.
Stage Two’s extended life – hard, but don’t snivel.
Stage Three: genetic change, youthful reverse.

You must want Life – must fight Death all the way,
Ignoring social norms, pressure from peers;
Such life will need a gamer’s vigilance.
Your other futures are: ashes, or clay.
And if help’s late, as you slide down the years,
Cryonics is your waiting ambulance.

Published: Ambit 190, UK, October 2007