IMPLANTS AND BIOTECH

These are the scarecrow years
When frost tears glisten
On molded and painted cheeks, beside ears
That no longer listen
Being more deaf than dead
And hearing only
Through implants and inputs into the head
Bonily, stonily.

Fears come while certainties lapse:
Fears of the dark,
Of abandonment, monsters, uncertainty. Now (perhaps)
Some Schrödinger’s shark
Divides cosmonaut, cryonaut, chrononaut
From those who can’t trust
The unknown, are ill-taught, or die without thought.

Thrive on change, or be dust.

Published online: The Rotary Dial, Canada, September 2015

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