Into Water (poem)

Posted by ractrose on 27 May 2020 in Art, Poems

Which would be the more vulnerable if it were only a game

Or should the haptics of drone dragoons invest

the operator with a true-to-life experience

The prey, she

going flat in the underbrush, with a weapon of her own

We’ll say a bolas, charged in a backpack and her glasses

project the enemy view, at the drone’s homing

She fires

it falls

If it is conceived by evil men

Made to shoot flame or blades

Or gaseous poisons

She will run in light-changing camouflage

Distort the timing of terrain matching

Cancel the program with an infrared ray

And the tech made keen by a physical sense of flying

Has a brain-alteration, after fifty or so trials

Become so ethically useless as to need retiring

If it were only a game, standings would sit as evidence

Players proud to have their scores preserved

Every year renew the quest for vengeance, the loser’s turn

The cup to hold, the champion’s name engraved

Into Water