An attempt at post apocalyptic futurespeak. A sort of extracomputery Riddley Walker, incorporating an idea I had about a future tribal society based in abandoned retail parks…
Timewas, way spoolback in the beta longgone,
So googolmany units vital-functioned
In ministores prepackaged, branded “home”.
And earlymodels gamed without alert
Pre megabluescreendeath, the world was other.
It all rebooted wrong after The Crash.
No unit clicks what programmed in The Crash.
Why laptops froze, so far in beta longgone,
So units could no longer mail each other.
The creditstockitmarket quit to function,
The database went into red alert
No unit dared to leave the thing called home.
In uptodate, there’s no such thing as home:
We’ve lived in retailoutlets since the crash.
And I stand firewall, ready and alert,
Although they haven’t raided us in longgone:
The lidlunits have a virus function
Lidl and Comet units hate each other.
We cannot trust their content: they are other.
Though, in the beta, we’d have felt at home
With them, postcrash, we can no longer function
Because they think our people wrote the crash.
On living laptops, spoolback in the longgone.
So they are malware. We standby, alert.
We scan our earlymodels with alert.
Recharge them when we can, and blog each other.
It’s hard without the laptops, but in longone,
The megavirus came. It wiped the home-
Screen, caused the wholeworldweb to crash.
And, uninstalled, the units could not function.
Though we are loading slowly, we can function
Without the laptops. But we must alert
The earlymodels all about the crash
So they will click, and learn to blog each other.
One day, we’ll reinstall and go back home.
Copy timewas, way spoolback in the longgone.
PreCrash, all units thought that they could function.
But in longgone, they should have been alert:
If they’d been other, we’d upgrade to home.
Tom Juniper Poetry 