The last two years I’ve written a poem looking back and ahead. Here I record them for posterity.
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2025
We’ve just shown the door, to 2024
I’m done, that’s enough, but no wait! Here comes more!
Out with the Tories, now Labours in power,
What is it they say? Come the man, come the hour?
No wait, that’s all wrong, and it doesn’t stop there,
As a slimy cross-section parts Keir Starmer’s hair.
What is that scrambling out of his head?
Oh my word, he’s a Conservative Xenomorph egg!
The face-hugger chases the winter fuel allowance,
Corners the elderly, waits, prepares, pounces!
It takes but a moment, and out of its body,
Out bursts Liz Kendall and the ‘Back to Work’ lobby.
The DWP and the NHS,
Soon dragged to the basement and hung up in the nest,
Their coming out of the walls, game over man!
Smirks Kemi Badenoch, siding with Trumps right-hand-man.
Forget OCP or Weyland Yutani,
Now we’re up against a Tory duplicate army!
Their shiny black carapace encases their souls,
Shields them from moral or ethical goals.
Acid for blood? No, the words that they spit,
Crafting division and digging a pit,
Into which they will hurl all that Keir Hardie stood for,
What we need now is a working-class martyr.
This vile infestation’s too rooted, too deep,
We need our own Ellen Ripley to burn out this heap.
Of Blue Labour pretenders, and Tory turn-coats,
It’s a long-running scheme, they just follow the votes.
The perfect organism, its purpose so pure,
Nuke the site from orbit, only way to be sure.
So while Kier smears the face of Socialist progress,
Badenoch schmoozes the right-wing Trump purists.
After Starmers vandalism the Conservative line,
Is ’Back in the big chair, 2029!’
Their leadership’s fangs over Britannia twitch,
But I’ll be there to say, ‘Get away from her you bitch!’
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2024
So 2023 and, between you and me,
I couldn’t wait to say ‘Hasta la vista, Baby!’
Our Skynet? A martyr to lunacy and fear,
‘But he’s gone!’, ‘no he’s back’ or he might be, oh dear.
But still a new year, oh it feels like an age,
And Skynet’s not gone, he’s just not centre stage.
I sigh as I wake into 2024,
Open the curtains, ‘Oh look, a new War’.
Well a few if I’m honest,
Fought with weapons and words,
Take your pick, if you can,
It’s a whole mess of turds.
OCP rising, those corporate rats,
ChatGPT and its ilk stolen algorithms grown fat.
I’m tired and weary, I just want to sleep,
I’m in need of some backup, ‘Your move Creep!’
So who’s this that I see, cyborg on a mission,
It’s Robocop! (Copywrite Law Division).
‘That AI you use for your DnD portrait?
Or self insert fanfic you read while you work late?
It comes at a cost to hard working creatives,
They struggle and fight, their income’s not ablative.
‘But writing is easy and painting is fun!’
Well pick up a notebook and try sometime son!
This tech could have been a few wonderful tools,
To enhance our hobbies but people are fools.
There’s thousands of words in those hundreds of pages,
And transferring your thoughts to your canvas takes ages.
AI should be freeing us all to create,
Not stealing art, sowing division and hate.
So that character portrait which you so adore?
Pay it back, buy some art, read a book, that and more!
It’s not the AI that stands here accused,
It’s the amoral way that it’s taught, or it’s used.
So use it for profit, but just wait and see,
‘Dead or alive, creep! You’re coming with me!’
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2023
So, the turkey’s all gobbled, the tree has been topped.
The Bucks has all fizzed, and the ball has been dropped.
The year ahead should be, all dreams goals and hope.
But after three years of bullshit, it’s a long road of ‘Nope!’
There’s no bargain, or reason, as Kyle Reese said.
It won’t sleep, it won’t stop, not until you are dead.
But you’re Sarah Connor, and no mild kitten.
The road stretches on, the future unwritten.
Still, gather around you, the people you love.
Stand tall, gird your loins, let’s give it a shove.
Eyes on the horizon, and don’t be berated.
We’ll look back ’23, and call you ‘Terminated’.
David Cart-Writer 