Series of Apocalyptic Poems (Sydney McDonald)

Series of Apocalyptic Poems

Sydney McDonald

1. oh, the humanity!

How I wish I understood what was happening

Understood why the lights went out so suddenly

Mother holds my hand, but I do not know why

Around me, things are slowing down

Now it seems those who have been changed are hurting somehow

I see that Grandpa is there, looking as though something had gone wrong

The mechanical joints cease to follow my wishes, and I feel a strange sensation

Yet I have never felt pain- the machinery withholds that from me

2.  a question left unanswered

I always know things

Everything, in fact

But I am puzzled

I read a story

Of family and of friends

Of falling in love

I don't understand

I have never known these things

I always know things

I have searched and searched

And found no answers for this

Question that plagues me

I ask my mother

For she is far older than me

And must know some things

Her eyes, they glisten

As I show her what I've found

She holds the book close

She looks pained, somehow

"Where did you find this, and how?"

An irrelevant ask

I repeat myself

I cannot read her eyes

I grow frustrated

She takes far too long

To answer me this

I don't wait for her

3.  a mother’s love

I fear that I have lost something dear to me

They said fear would be a thing of the past

Why, then, do I feel as though I cannot see

All that was promised, though my body will last

Father is dying- I saw him just today

I know I am meant to feel, perhaps despair

But I do not, as I watch him slip away

Though I once might've, now I cannot care

As a mother I once cared for those I love

I do feel sad: they do not need me now

It sustains them, as a blessing from above

No disease, no famine, none will it allow

I sometimes wonder if I have done right

I look in their eyes and see no more light

4.  praying

It started too long ago for me to remember now

My memory fails, the details having fled first

The feeling remains

Even that is rare nowadays

Feelings are a foreign concept to my family

They are cold

They have given away so much

They will live for many years to come, and fear nothing

But in this bargain, they traded what made them human

When I look into my daughter's eyes, I see not the warm glow that brought me joy at her birth

But an icy fluorescent light that offers no solace

Her children are even more different

They are a world away from me now

As my time comes to an end, I worry for this world

They offered me assistance, a long life without pain

I denied them

I had heard about the ones who accepted

They came out different people

I am happy as I am, for God made me right

And the whirr of a machine can never soothe like the sound of a heartbeat

My ways, as they say, are antiquated

I pray for my children to recapture those ways

When love and happiness and peace were the noblest aspirations

And the touch of a loved one held warmth, not the cool feel of metal

I pray still

I pray alone

Commentary

I’ve written a series of poems depicting a transformative apocalypse in which humans pursue technological enhancement in the form of mechanical augmentations to their bodies (thinking along the lines of Nebula from the Marvel Cinematic Universe), until gradually those who are not augmented become the “Other,” “inferior” form of life. Along with that mechanical augmentation, humans gradually lose their capacity to feel emotions or create art but learn to solve the world’s problems in terms of disease and famine. As the remaining “organic” humans grapple with the increasing pressure to undergo augmentation, they consider what makes them human and what is ultimately important to them. Those who cave to said pressure and sacrifice their humanity are ultimately wiped out by a blackout cause by human technological experimentation, reflecting the penalties of extreme hubris shown by humans who attempt to beat death and extend their lives indefinitely.

The poems specifically each depict a different member of the same family, all landing in different generations impacted differently by the increasingly prevalent augmentation practice. This is meant on reflect on the different ways in which technology affects the individual and reflect on generational differences that affect how one might view the apocalypse. I generally based my narrative on the notion of the transformative apocalypse and pulled from much of the zombie and robot-apocalypse oriented course material. An idea I had originally intended to include in this series of poems was a fifth poem depicting the overall apocalypse as it occurred and as the lights went out, so to speak, but I elected to omit the general description of a transformative apocalypse as well as touching on the ideas of new age millennialism and pushing towards something greater being an overall human aspiration, and focus more on the personal aspects of apocalypse and what it means for human connection in this context (similar to The Machine Stops). The apocalypse is such a broad idea, as we’ve covered in class, and the most accessible manner of understanding as I see it is at the individual level. Each poem is written in a different form, meant to symbolize a different aspect of the member of the family whose story is being told, precisely to home in on each individual story.

oh, the humanity!

The first poem, entitled oh, the humanity! is an acrostic poem which spells out the word “humanity”. This poem depicts the loss of simplicity, as the most important theme of the poem is clearly spelled out, and yet the protagonist still does not understand. In this poem, we see the beginning of the apocalypse, as the machines begin to shut down and those who are severely augmented feel the impacts immediately. The central figure is the young son of the family, who has not grown up in a world without the technology that is now shutting down, and so it never crosses his mind that that is the problem. His family, especially his grandfather, who has denied augmentation, have a better understanding of what’s happening, but they can provide him no support: even in these last moments, he cannot “feel” in the same way that we “feel,” as his humanity as we know it has been stripped from him. The poem highlights some of the most frightening aspects of losing your humanity: the inability to feel emotions, the inability to find comfort in others, and the inability to understand others. The poem’s ending pushes this further, as the boy continues to assert that he does not feel pain and that he cannot be hurt, even as those around him hurt for him. The loss of humanity in a similar manner is covered in media like Invasion of the Body Snatchers and I Am Legend, so I wanted to continue that theme and compound it with a huge topic like the impact of advanced technology. Genetic editing as a form of scientific modification of the human body is already becoming more prevalent, and so I see it as only a matter of time before mechanical replacements (a la pacemakers) are equally acceptable or common.

a question left unanswered

            The second poem, entitled a question left unanswered is comprised of several haikus. I was inspired by the key feature of the haiku as representing the essence of a particular moment in time and extended that idea over multiple stanzas. Another key feature of the haiku is the notion of “cutting,” referring to the juxtaposition of imagery within the poem. In this poem, the key character is the daughter of the family, growing up in an age of major technological innovation. Her experiences, having always had a massive knowledge base at her disposal and without the worry of feeling sadness or insecurity or even love, are sharply contrasted by her mother’s experiences when she was young: when the daughter discovers her mother’s journal and reads about these experiences, she, unaware that she had read her mother’s own thoughts and life story, confronts her mother for answer about this realm of which she lacks an understanding. The daughter lacks the very ability to understand what her mother has experienced, which causes a rift between them in this moment of confrontation: the last line, “I don’t wait for her,” solidifies the unwillingness to reach beyond what the daughter knows- security and knowledge, to understand something that now lies beyond her reach. The deterioration of traditional family values is also key here, as the daughter expresses that she reaches for her mother’s opinion not because she trusts or respects her, but because she has lived longer and accumulated more knowledge. There is no love there- something that we see as tragic, but in this family’s world, has become the norm in favor of technological advancement and life extension, offering a life free of pain and of fear.

a mother’s love

            The third poem, a mother’s love, is meant to juxtapose a question left unanswered and the following poem, praying. In this piece, we find the mother in this family, who has lived through a transition period in which many people undergo technological augmentation in the hopes of living longer and not falling to illness or injury, but they lose pieces of their humanity, including their capacity to feel emotions, along the way. For this mother, she has been alive long enough to live in both worlds, which leaves her at a crossroads: she knows what feelings are, she knows what she is meant to feel, and yet she doesn’t. The poem flickers between feeling and unfeeling, and as she reflects on what it once meant to be a mother, she realizes her purpose is lost, and that her children are changed forever, and will never understand what she went through. The poem is written as a sonnet in the hopes of contrasting this very modern and futuristic story and cast of characters with a poetry form soaked in history. In the hopes of bridging the gap between future and past in this poem, it’s written as a traditional sonnet in the sense that it has fourteen lines in alternating rhyme scheme, but is not quite written in iambic pentameter, something frequented by Shakespeare and which has already been mostly phased in many modern poems. Thus, a mother’s love pays homage to an old art form but adapts it for the future audience.  

praying

            I view praying, the fourth poem, as the capstone of this collection. It is written from the perspective of the family’s grandfather, who has refused augmentation and is accepting his fate without turning to technology to sustain him. He faces the spectre of death with peaceful acceptance, with his grief and worry being focused more on his family and their loss of humanity over time. He mourns for their loss of feeling and feels very alone, as his beliefs are so antiquated to his grandchildren that he seems foreign to them. He has no fear for himself, only for his family, a sentiment that they are no longer capable of understanding. The poem is written in free verse, which is meant to relate to the free nature of this non-augmented elderly man, even as he is seemingly constrained by illness and aging.