What will happen when the burning stops?
When the machines constrained by lifetimes of combustion
Give up the ghost?
Will they lie in several cylinder scrapheaps
A museum to the dead and
Laughed at for the ignorance they spawned?
Dear listener, no!
The machines, you see, have heard of another way.
While grinding futures for us
They've been musing on their own
And sharing it with their
Mechanical, electrical and hydraulic fellows
At midnight hours when the plants shut down
Their vision, beloved friends,
Is a lot like yours and mine
It's springier
More romantic than you'd give credit
To the tools and luxuries given breath
By modern man
They will, you see, if you listen closely,
Reveal their big secret
As they agreed to do through me
In 2014, after the great collapse and restoration of humankind
Walking in W. Amsterdam will be quite a different sight
You'll see cars sprout legs
With wheels as feet
March down roads
Beeping greetings to fellows
Tower blocks leaping frog-like
Over city centres and latte-humbled department stores
Desperate to be free
You'll have trains
Caterpillar crawling,
Munching electric cables for leaves,
Then cocooning under bridges
In six weeks to grow wings
They'll join their friends the aeroplanes
Who flap across lands
On weekend trips to the Moon
Dear friends - just think!
What fun could have been had
And so much earlier if we had just stopped
Our crude and senseless abuse
Of the machinated beings?
If we had stopped to hear
The heartbeat of a car,
The breathing of a mobile phone,
And the contented rustle of a telephone wire
As it settles into a Sunday Afternoon?
I'd like to think we'd learn a lot
Even become friends
So go now
Give your oven room
It's about to lay some eggs
~