FutureNow by James Geddis

It begins by invoking the savagery of a ball point pen

Since the birth of that neurotic snake
With breath like cosmic trees
It has boiled beneath our surface matter stage
And only now, after twin bruises and a heat wave
We may begin to haul its fumes

Soon we’ll have the frackers on it, I promise you
But yes, the pen

Beneath the hollow pomposity of intellectual strain lies, in my eyes,
An untapped wisdom
A bone-box philosophy

Let it be a twist
Or a click
Or a pressurised clap
They all speak with the soon-to-be mantra of “if-you-may”
And how can I not but answer with a simpering grin and oblige
Blessed are we for that manufactured perfection
It is an elite augmentation
The truly undeniable valour of a straight line
Has been cultivated
By decades of
Swivel chairs
And sheltered
Souls
You can hear its pin drop scream with a flick
Magnetic isn’t it? The frenzied serenity of white noise

I expect you’re starting to see it now
The black sand The white sand The sand that isn’t there

But of course I would call it “wonderfully” savage, you misunderstand
I do not speak of that initial inclination: the feather
With his dead son and back-banter pilgrimage
No, I do not speak bohemian
This is a different ramble altogether
One as loud and as heart-spearing as the fear of hearing nothing at all

This is for the fountainheads
The static age

II

I think the Italian was on to something
You all know the one; he made the long speech about metal and speed
About burning down trees with movement
About cylinders
He was going to save those boys with axes, tear out every brick like he was the spotted stuff of
Signac’s ooze Full-on cardiovascular!
The only tragedy of course, was the paper
There are better ways to singing danger than with candles in the opera house
Nevertheless, he was onto something
The, burning, yearning gas-o-line, the ache that bleeds,
The way it feeds
The mother seed
Oozing, oozing, gas-o-line

Pretty soon I imagine they’ll start making digits,
Hoard of steel-tongued romantics
I imagine it’ll be beginners luck
When they take the last three words of ARTIFICIAL and just roll with it
Turn it into a car or something
Freshly forged to a factory standard
Maybe a gradient of digitised overspray— or I image
a pulse of the great and powerful atom: Walter’s genie

And yes, I hear you say “light is not worth more than the sum of its rays,” true
Still, static has a tang to
We could make her a feast! A brownian martyr, all rib and code
I mean, how in your mind could we forget the child?
She’s the synthetic spawn
The first of many a modern biped
The new constant, the all, the infinite, the void, the empty, the sublime, the grey
Yes! Grey and… pernicious, grey and deleterious, grey and injurious
These things are after all... human I imagine
There will be hunger, but with mechanical proximity
The beast made phantom from the wizard’s vial
Anything, anything, so long as the teeth can still churn in this post-relevant campaign

We’ll have some industrial dancing with chrome steel drums, make it a real feast
So long as the teeth keep churning—O the succulent fragrance of ash—just haul it in
Hmm? “Glorify war?”
Well, hygiene is an acquired taste
But for now we can only imagine

III

Instead, let me take you to a paradise:
In the catacombs of dead water, neo-ancient pillars hold up heroes from the prime hand:
The smith, the cobbler, and anyone else with the gall to hold the nails and knives
They are each immortalised under a stone-fashioned sky of alabaster
A metaphysical decadence of constellations, infinity clocks and the celestial compass
And at night, we see the ink-soaked scrimmage of the scorpion and bear

All this is cocooned in that wide-stretching valley
Nestled between cliffs so endless in their restless swathe of white
That nothing lies beyond but void felt fields
It is defined by its own youth wise, but only with reversing years
Seeded from some far too distant now
Where science is a fairytale
And the rational mind but a shadow that spooks ambitious cavemen

Where everyone is friends with Mr. McQueen
Where the box men jitter to the West End Girls
Where synth is the voice of imagined amalgamations
Where midnight is the only time of day and the stars only shine because we put them
there
Stars that can sour and tell us time with a blink
Where we speak in laser and communicate by the Everyman’s crystalware
Heavenly gifts of digital sand black sand white sand the sand that isn’t
there

The Demolisher, for one, takes pride when he holds his axe
His grip is a testament to the strength of his pixels
A titan of this new dark world
In the office he crouches and clicks with the other crouchers and clickers
His brothers and sisters, left and right

They grin because they all know the game
They all know the thrill of their monotony
They pass the halls in V formation with that cold stern glare
Like they were the once who first invented the boot
Theirs is the strength to look back on the day of old and smile
They will swipe and the skies will quake

Ours will be the crystal spires that feed on drifting sand
Without the crescendo of shards
The Demolisher has learned how to shakes hands
Now he grips the scaffold of our crystalline metropolis, determined in the climb
How far can he go?
How far can his arithmetic swings help fester our new condition?
This question is the ritual of tin men and bricks and Nature’s well provides
The quintessence of the fall The thrill of reaching
Between these two constellations is where our paradigm rests
Where we draw the straight line
Smooth and grey

IV

First, however, we must climb so let’s talk binary

We have to because we must, and I’m certainly not using that other tongue
Loving the Sun is just too much and too little apologia
The whys and wherefores are crucial in this anti land of ours

I knew a man who loved the Sun
A good man— too feathered for my tastes, but a good man
Oh he made vindication very desirable
Spoke of nights warmer than days
Of darkness brighter than light
Of seas drier than land
All of it was the orgasmic musings of our dead child
But then he had to ruin it with talk of distinctions! That’s not my philosophy
They never mentioned the puritans
It’s why we get flustered, you see
We become overwhelmed
Surrounded by their Angels, even though we can clearly see the cables
Yes—then we start to think we’re mad or brazenly fuelled with another crackpot
genocide
A phantom apocalypse
Placebo
So we start up poised
Perhaps we etch a scowl of “how dare you” and “I would never” and
“Woe to anyone who says those infamous words to us
again!”
And all other kinds of makeshift bombshell

Yes—maybe we even cry over invisible children
Remember that the only way to save the world is by throwing stones
Yes—because as we all know it’s a happier world when we’re all stepping in shards
Yes—sorry—no
“We know them, we’ve understood!”
The vile volvaxanous spite of the child that thinks it’s right
The child that learned to fuck the system in a sex-ed class before they could spell in-ly-ten-
mant

True enlightenment, true, untamed, unequivocally raw enlightenment
The last beast we fear to tame
There are five million monks in the house of mantra, yet nobody can answer the door?
And yes Midas mourned, but by the stars did that bitch shine!
She still does in silver, can’t you see?
The black sand the white sand the sand that isn’t there!
Can’t you see? Here she comes!
The Sunrise Queen!
Caliban to the pin-striped man
And Mistress of the echo machine!
She watches and waits from her palace of glass and steel
And whispers the hymns of soft envy

Despite all this, you would have us deny the coronation?
This is but slime in a stadium
Resentment in a body of flashing eyes
The last undersea dweller in the senate of grey angels
How many times? Grey and orgasmic
Ingestible, they are the nicest miracles of progress
Forward in all directions
That is the mission, the only mission
Forward to her majesty, Modernity’s prime
Forward, in all directions
Forward, because the future now waits in the queen’s great eye
The only question is can you see it?
Because I can only imagine

All images by James Geddis

James Geddis is a writer from Bexleyheath, Kent. He has recently received his BA with 1st honours in English and American Literature and Creative Writing at the University of Kent in Canterbury. His previous writings in fiction and poetry have been reviewed by editors of DATABLEED and Newfound Magazine. He is currently working on a science fiction novel.