POEM: “My Wildest Dreams for Them”

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“My Wildest Dreams for Them”

 

that live in the future

are pretty predictable.

I’d like to say what

a humanitarian might:

that my descendants

live in a world of peace

free from disease and distress.

But what I really want,

I mean the very first thing

that popped into my brain,

was that my great grandchildren

would live on Mars

with robot servants

but the kind of robots

that are smart enough

to fulfill all their basic needs

without violating the pesky

ethics of unpaid labor

performed by sentient species,

and also they’d win Nobel prizes

(my descendants, but not

the robots–although I don’t

see why not) in literature,

maybe become

Martian Shakespeares

encapsulating their era’s

Martian-humanoid

culture for generations to come,

long after their own demise,

so that everyone could

devote themselves to art

and science and poetry

and beauty and also spend

Sunday afternoons sipping tea

between monster-movie marathons

because what’s the point

in an ideal future

if you can’t have a little fun?

 

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Since my second book, An Optimist’s Journal of the End of Days and Other Stories, is due to be published via Venetian Spider Press this coming Tuesday, I thought I’d post a scifi-themed poem in honor of its publication. I hope you enjoyed it!

 

* image courtesy of publicdomainpictures.net via Creative Commons Licensing