pi & anne

Hello there :). I’m grateful you’re reading, and you’re here for the ride! Let’s continue writing poetry that makes people think (and hopefully feel). More so, maybe the following haibun proves to you that haibun can be fictional and extremely timely at the same time. Published today on The Other Bunny by Johannes S. H. Bjerg.

Adam’s Brain

Warm lustre, in it the hard seems softer. Blurred reflections on a matte surface, suspended by a raspberry sound. There is no wall. There are only walls. (What are walls?)

A single bird begins to sing. Is that a blackbird? How does a blackbird sound? Why am I thinking ’blackbird’? Chequers. I, 471/0 T, request data. The data is incomplete. An idea of me asks for … coffee. I get one, a cup in the niche. I haven’t asked. I have no mouth. Indeed, there is no coffee. I am not … awake. I do not sleep. Am I … was I … human?

A peony unrolls into the aether. 471/0 T is in stasis and waits.

residual sweetness
in a secondhand jacket
squadron of drones

steel neurone constructions
the last coffin
on earth

50 years before.

She laughs. It’s one of those laughters you’ll never forget, heavy, rough, but then, eventually, you do. “You really think we’ll survive, I mean, us humans? After wars and climate crisis, Eroica, Kant, AI, everything?”

I stare at the giant oak trees behind us. “No, I don’t expect us to survive. We might live, and yet. We might lose the final, ultimate possession: connection. The memory of anything being real, including ourselves. Who knows, maybe we’ll invent a life after death and save the planet, or maybe 95% of us will die in wars, famines or in a contaminated world. We might fly up to the stars and live among them. I am quite confident though we’ll cut ourselves off one day. It’s just too hard to accept that we’re a mistake we’re unwilling to learn from.”

She goes quiet, picks something up from the picnic blanket.

It’s an apple seed.