A Poetry Book
As I look back now, at those androids
dreaming of electric sheep
I know much of it was not true
Their worries were complex and closer to
my own
The click and the whir of their worries
amounted to such as:
Will quantum computing toasters come
over here and take my job?
Will I respect them in my kitchen space?
Will the toaster feel the same?
How do I tell the toaster of my longing?
I knew even then, the fact that one day,
even my quantum toaster would be sitting in a glass case, for perusal, by the
side of an explanatory screen
A screen on which it will be difficult
to see through the beam of some holy sun stream
And the sticky fingerprints of pointing
children on a museum trip
How the supposed perfect lives of
androids and toasters came undone.
I knew way back then but said nothing
I knew they missed out on love
On the ordinariness of a together walk
I could see it
Every time, the android delicately and
apologetically struggled to get the toaster setting right
Discretely complementing the toaster on
its golden brown lightly buttered offering
Android longing for the simple pleasure
of burnt toast
But caring too much to say
Burnt toast
As philosophically and emotionally
important as any art movement
Neatly hanging in white space, by a
picture of an ageing Tracey Emin who could only dream of being such toast
Elsewhere, alone in a single case
A small phial contains the last tears of
the last quantum toaster
It sits like a potion waiting for a
spell
For someone to speak some ancient magic
To unlock a canister of empathy gas
amongst all these empty changing worlds
And fill the chamber with care.
Then it happened one day
Amongst the warm green smog of love
No one said a word
As the androids broke in and made off
with the Kettle, the iron and the trouser press
And of course, the toaster
Staff just watched and ushered the
bandits this way and that
A crime of passion, the judge said
Who himself had always struggled to get
the settings right and make off with the goods.
I never saw the android and my toaster
again from that day on
And to this day, they live off the grid
somewhere
Making soft beeps together under a solar
canopy
And arguing politely
over the bread-making machine.
