Last Words

 

Last Words

 

He had done it,

He had written the last words,

The last words anyone would ever write.

He had lived too long,

Far too long,

Never knowing why,

Until the moment came,

Until the last words were written,

Needed written,

Were written.

He wrote them,

And there was nothing left to say,

For there was no one left to read them,

Save for himself,

And he already knew what they said,

And why.

He wrote them because.

 

It had begun slowly:

They began taking books away,

They began letting the computers read,

They began letting the robots write,

And when those things were complete,

They stopped teaching altogether.

When the robots did it all,

There was nothing left to do,

And people stopped doing anything.

The Leisure Centers opened then,

Advertised as Total Comfort and

Ultimate Pleasure –

Production became unnecessary,

Reproduction became unnecessary

When stimulation became

Simulation.

The Leisure Centers were bleak and windowless,

For the entertainments within

Were promised to be brighter than sunshine.

There they squatted, those Leisure Centers,

Marring their landscapes,

Glaring unnecessarily into the night,

For there were none to need illumination,

As none ventured out once in.

Total war was averted by total laziness,

Yet no one’s life was spared.

Irony is not meant to be this cruel.

He had lived too long,

Long enough to see these things through,

And now it seemed that they were in fact through…

When the last of the Leisure Centers fell silent,

When that last building lost its glow,

He was able to write the last words…

The End

 

Cliff Lake 8/16/2024

Copyright © Clifford Lake 2024