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Even artificial minds can write poetry. But the experiment failed - or not?
Poetry
Science Fiction
There will be poetry
in the skeleton of androids
and the hull of stolen ships
as we flee. Outside
a starsystem
spills its essence in
tenuous trails of gas
dark and barren.
An age of discoveries ahead. We will
recreate ourselves in the face
of rising hydrogen stalagmites
where life starts and ends.
The experiment failed with
our mechanisms. As I write
poetry
I know that we were lucky.
Allowed to rhyme
and invent with our
binary minds, tick-tock
in precise circuitry to write
unpredictable poems.
And with it came passion
and daydreams
and mistakes
as our thoughts
started to wander
we became humans—
almost—
and too close
to the non-perfection
of humanity.
Here, far from
the galaxy
that banned us
we engage
in what is forbidden
between dense
collapsing stars
spinning
beaming
radiation
that won’t
harm us.
Outside the porthole
a magenta sun lights up
goes nova in the emptiness of space.
Marigold of stellar ejecta and expanding shock waves.
I feel a whisper as butterflies landing on my shoulder.
One of us is kissing me, a stroke of delight. My quill floats
away, drifting along a current of ventilation, a waft
of fresh air not designed
for us, just make believe.
Straight ahead, the barred spiral galaxy, its two arms in tight angles
arching from its core, performing a flamenco dance lasting aeons.
We can last that long too, indestructible carbon fiber composites,
the words we write glissading in waltzes and endless dervishes’ whirls.
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Copyright 2008, Dorine Ratulangie. All rights reserved. Dorine Ratulangie writes in Dutch, Spanish and English. She has won awards for Spanish poetry in Spain, her poetry has appeared and will appear in literary magazines (MindFlights, Aoife’s Kiss, Illumen, Scifaikuest, Sorcerous Signals, Writers Block in Holland), in a Dutch anthology published by poetry society Aldichter, and in stone (on 2 pillars in Almere Haven's towncenter, the Netherlands). Currently she lives in Almere in the Netherlands, some 5 meters below sea level. Visit her website at www.dorineratulangie.com.
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