Post-Crisis there will be no
time for poetry. Don't be ridiculous. Pretty words are all very well but, unless they can be eaten
or used as fuel or a weapon (an actual weapon that hurts faces, not a metaphorical one that hurts feelings) then
they will not be on the list of things that people should be making.
Yet, no one in any semblance of power is against poetry per se, in fact they used to dabble
a bit in their youth: song lyrics, stuff like that. Nothing published, of
course, they never had the right connections. But, yep, they GET IT, so it has
been agreed that poetry production will be ramped up pre-Crisis, in order to ensure that we have the luxury of lovely
but utterly impractical language for the hundreds of years of long, dark,
freezing, frightening nights to come. Human poets have promised to do their
best to write more, but they are an unreliable lot, always waiting for inspiration
whilst wasting hours and hours embroiled in complicated affairs with the wives, husbands and teenage children of other poets.
The POEM-PLEX 2000 is a custom
built computer specifically designed to write poetry all day, every day. The software
is currently undergoing final testing, but is already producing work that is empirically better than 94.8% of human poetry.
Full production begins next year, and will be organised on a regional basis – the South will specialise in Love poetry; the East,
Nature; the West will produce verse about human
existence, and the North about old stuff that makes you think
about other stuff when you look at it.
Here is an example from one of the Poem-Plexes currently hard at work in the ARTS-GOV complex in downtown Bournemouth.
LOVE by
WORDSWORTH2
There used to be a hundred words for this feeling
Now there is but one:
Love
The love of not giving in and simply
succumbing to death, no matter how sweet it would be
We are all so very tired
but love is the fuel substitute
that keeps our half-empty bodies semi-functioning
Go to Line One
