“My Wildest Dreams for Them”
that live in the future
are pretty predictable.
I’d like to say what
a humanitarian might:
that my descendants
live in a world of peace
free from disease and distress.
But what I really want,
I mean the very first thing
that popped into my brain,
was that my great grandchildren
would live on Mars
with robot servants
but the kind of robots
that are smart enough
to fulfill all their basic needs
without violating the pesky
ethics of unpaid labor
performed by sentient species,
and also they’d win Nobel prizes
(my descendants, but not
the robots–although I don’t
see why not) in literature,
maybe become
Martian Shakespeares
encapsulating their era’s
Martian-humanoid
culture for generations to come,
long after their own demise,
so that everyone could
devote themselves to art
and science and poetry
and beauty and also spend
Sunday afternoons sipping tea
between monster-movie marathons
because what’s the point
in an ideal future
if you can’t have a little fun?
#
Since my second book, An Optimist’s Journal of the End of Days and Other Stories, is due to be published via Venetian Spider Press this coming Tuesday, I thought I’d post a scifi-themed poem in honor of its publication. I hope you enjoyed it!
*image courtesy of publicdomainpictures.net via Creative Commons Licensing
Cat Russell 