Sunday, April 12, 2015

Post-Apocalyptic Radio Broadcasts

All the prayers I have left, gathered by scraping
out my skull with the most thorough spatula I own,
are those beginning with the vacuously conditional
"If you exist" and ending with an endless asymptotic descent
toward wordlessness. Undead moaning. Whoever,
whatever, if, if—Have mercy! God(s) or goddess(es) loving
or wrathful, intervene! Laissez-faire alien observers,
beam down here and sort us out! Secret government
eavesdroppers, fly-on-the-wall documentarians, awakening
telepaths in my neighborhood, emergent cloud-based
AI consciousnesses, hear my prayer! Be the savior I need.
Narcissistic screenwriter of my life, penning these petitions
in my voice, understand that you have the power,
the responsibility. If I'm shambling and mindless it's because
you wrote me that way. If I'm tragically flawed,
if in this world tragedy is an acceptable ending
it's only because you want to be edgy and get laid.
Hyperdimensional sadist preteen superbeing playing a game
analogous to The Sims, for the love of God
put the ladders back in the damned swimming pools.
We, an unsaved race called humanity; me, an unsaved
creature of said race—we're here, we're in some sense real,
and we lack the virtue to save ourselves. Somebody, anybody
out there: Hear us, intervene, tyrannically as necessary
like a responsible parent or a good Samaritan or a true hero,
hear us, save us, have mercy. Amen, over and out.