Speciating & Others

Yuan Changming hails with Allen Yuan from poetrypacific.blogspot.ca. Credits include eleven Pushcart nominations besides appearances in Best of the Best Canadian Poetry (2008-17) & BestNewPoemsOnline, among nearly 1900 others. Recently, Yuan published his eleventh chapbook Limerence, and served on the jury for Canada’s 44th National Magazine Awards (poetry category).

Speciating

There are still sapiens on Earth. Often do we remember and feel more than proud that only we Godlings exist – the most sophisticated & most exquisite human-robot compounds. It is true that occasionally we cannot help recalling one or two of them, like Shakespeare & Einstein, but that’s when they pop up unexpectedly from the back of a chip as a couple of forgotten algorithms. Their story tells them they are much more developed physically & intellectually than chimpanzees, while in reality the latter is at least spiritually far more respectable. Since sapiens have proven good for nothing & for nobody, just a sub species of waste wasting endless earthly resources, how can we get rid of them in such gargantuan crowds? — To eliminate them once & for all, or just to wait for their total self-destruction?


On the Recycling Day

One neighbor took out a blue box
Full of cat skulls and dog legs
Rather than glass or plastic bottles

Another carries out a yellow bag
Containing human bones, mostly children’s
Instead of magazines or paper products

A third pushed out a green bin
Filled with failed evils and devils
Where there should be leaves and twigs
While the garbage truck is setting a huge time bomb


The Moment My Soul Becomes an Electron

I find myself lost in a space of dark densities, where
The sun wind keeps blowing hard in all directions

Travelling as fast as light with other fellow electrons
I recognize few of them as my former acquaintances

Before swarming into antennas, sensors, end users
We all slough off our clothes made of digital codes

As we fill in every blank with our shapeless bodies
The whole world trespasses into a parallel universe

While resurrecting at every switch turned on