Three Odes, 2089 – 2172, Edited by Sebastian Groose

 

Ode to Jack Underwood

 

O, who designed the holodeck of Überlondon

so such a humble genius could be denied

with a crate of rubber ducks falling far

off that dock all poets must stumble across

after three accidental tabs of DMT

in the vegan pub? Must this simulation be

quite so brightly cruel? The magenta curves of death!
Did Jack see God, the happiness 2015

offered before the noxious bombs of the third world

war in the decades to come? Was it better for
the Dylan Thomas-named to consist entirely

along the edge of anxiety, to never
envision an eruption dystopic that will claim

billions? His eternal lyric sings sincere

among his collapsing. Buoyant as love, his words

are incantations – digitally aghast, against

virtuality – genius never not-not-young.

 

Consternation has been made regarding Underwood’s sympathies with the Green Party, but this criticism discards the historical context. Very few knew the political body would soon mutate into the Exo-Eco Militant Action-based Recuperation Enclave (EEMARE), let alone how effective their brutal purge of energy sector professionals would be in 2049. DeHuux deliberately toys with Underwood’s reputation, paralleling his own controversy when he emerged on the scene – the enjambment of “third world / war” is very telling, and aligns to DeHuux’s racist inclinations against the communist leagues of the Global South. Outrage from the critical literati upon the ode’s publication in Quizzical Inviter focused both on how out-of-fashion it was to choose Jack Underwood for an ‘ode’, of all things – though contemporary 23rd-century analyses his work with more nuance – as well as its apologetic stance to widely-discredited Silicon Valley myth of ‘simulationism’, the notion that all species live in a  computer simulation.

 

Ode to Hawk N-Q-122

 

Hawk N-Q-12 slept with the breath of footwork rhythms.
An android laid their wetting arm to the brow, to cool.

They, the last of the last iFurious. Do their

family and comrades not rage, congregated as
a livestream, the static in the air the sonic buzz

the ancient drum-and-bass of your people permitting
movement? Voluptuously the android, blue as the space

shuttle’s world-frame, kissed euthanasia upon their fore’

be-starred with sweat. The crisp scent of oil in their frontal
implant – that rings, hours later still, as the gathered

willed their irradiated ashes to eternal

activating space, the black hug, tenderly whispered

like the Windows 24 operating system failed

and they could not see to see the non-binary monarch

[][][]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]][].           upon the emerald hills.

 

Hawk N-Q-12 needs no introduction. They were the first non-binary poet to simultaneously hold both the offices of the UK and U.S. Laureateship due to the 2067 Anti-Bifurcation Agreement, along with the reception of numerous prizes and grants and commendation, including the Nobel (to which they burned their acceptance letter, live at the ceremony). When they publicly celebrated the San Francisco Cyborg Riots of ’82, they became a leading activist for android rights. DeHuux considers N-Q-12’s death with the sympathetic tone it deserves, although he still insists on referencing Dickinson as to compose his “immortal music” (DeHuux, 2099 interview) of morbidity, the ambitious “continuum of centuries” (Ibid.) his poetic project often attempts. Some critics have argued this negates any sympathies he has for the non-binary poet’s tragically sudden end. DeHuux’s patronising tone (“the ancient drum-and-bass of your people”) persists, too, and the sexualisation of the android nurse is sure to raise eyebrows (three editors begged him to take out “voluptuously “, much to DeHuux’s chagrin).

 

Ode to Sam Riviere

 

And twelve years later for no good reason I thought of Sam Riviere
and how he did not die but instead uploaded his consciousness

to AesthChance. Alas, due to glitchy indecision

he was converted into the algorithm a RhoCorp processing unit in Neo-Shoreditch

used without thought, a fate too many to-be-immortals succumbed

to due to the accursed bipartisan incompetence of

the Conversative-Labour Coalition administration

circa 2062. I remember Sam for reasons I am sure

of, good-natured, me spilling my protein supplement

with tears his way eighty years later, he-as-algorithm still working, probably

magnificent on some boring order or production line, as I – still the ‘dignified’ poet –

wonder why his banal pseudo-death had to happen when it was requested for the poor

so beautifully, I and my AI helper (whatever their name is) wondering (aloud

on this crisp winter morning, muffled philosophical thought through my gasmask

though his monotonal ‘response’ was not) if all the great writers

have already been born, if all upcoming genius is fated to be
the algorithm for an amazing processing plant in Neo-Shoreditch, if this is the site of worth?

 

This is a strange one. No serious writer has used single quotes in poems since 2032, for a start – whether this is due to DeHuux’s then-senility, or is a deliberate outrageous measure, is debatable. Explicit android discrimination makes this difficult to stomach, too, though the ironic hyperbole of the 2060s governance is more nuanced than initial reading could assume (see Payton-James, A Ball, Orbiting Fire: Political Ambivalence in the Mid-21st Century Lyric (University of Europa: South-East Federation of Jupiter, 2208), for more on this). The “request” for immortality technology being denied to working-classes being “beautiful” is also indefensible. ‘AesthChance’ is a pun on the actual organisation, AetherChance, and Neo-Shoreditch is anachronistic, having been flooded thirty years before Riviere’s tragic upload mishap. The ending is also puzzling. Some critics (namely Congrime) argue that “the site of worth” is a nod to one of DeHuux’s major influences, the poet, critic and yoga teacher Shaw Worth. Others (Ulbridge-Xom, Zlorg, Mumbo’Patchoo) dismiss this as sentimental.