Life Extension

Religion leers:
“Join me, or you face death,”
And History jeers,
“Inevitable death.”
But Science still adheres
To schemes to postpone death.
The path of a thousand years
Starts with a single breath.

Published online in Bewildering Stories #746, 21 January 2018

Haiku - Young Man

Where's the young man gone
Who lived in mirrors so long?
Putting old masks on.

Published online in The Asses of Parnassus, 11 January 2018

Shrivelling

After the last wife has died,

After the last woman has left in tears of frustration,

I shall sit, bent over, body and face

Not wrinkled as waterlogged fingers, but rather,

Dessicated and shrivelled as a raisin, all juice gone,

Mind crumpled up and thrown away in the trash,

Brain deflated and erratic as a dried-out walnut

To be packed away, hidden away in the cold, unthinking, in stasis,

In the hope that a Springtime of Science will have me take life again and sprout

Up, up, into something a thousand times greater than I was before, or am now.

Published: Ambit 211, UK, January 2013

TO MYSELF IN 50 YEARS TIME

Old fool! You really think yourself the same
As I who write to you, aged 22?
Ha! All we’ve got in common is my name:
I’ll wear it out, throw it away,
You’ll pick it up some other day....
But who are you?

My life’s before me; can you say the same?
I choose its how and why and when and who.
I’ll choose the rules by which we play the game;
I may choose wrong, it’s not denied,
But by my choice you must abide....
What choice have you?

If, bored, I think one day to see the world
I pack that day and fly out on the next.
My choice to wander, or to sit home-curled;
Each place has friends, good fun, good food,
But you sit toothless, silent, rude....
And undersexed!

Cares and regrets of loss can go to hell:
You sort them out with Reason’s time-worn tool.
Today’s superb; tomorrow looks as well:
The word “tomorrow” is a thrill,
I’ll make of mine just what I will....
What’s yours, old fool?

Published online: Snakeskin, UK, September 2008