Poetry | Satire & Humor
The Prognosticator’s Jest
An Omniscient look at humanity’s fate
They will soon find, as they traverse the chrome veins of progress,
the humorous plight of their frail ambitions, sewn in iron threads,
looped through the needle’s eye of technocracy. Tomorrow,
the suns will rise on circuits, each dawn a digital
parabola, each twilight a neon mirage, cities
will hum in electric elegy, and humanity, they will dance.
They will dance in the glow of holograms, their partners
ghosts of algorithms, pirouetting on the precipice
of obsolescence. The laughter of machines will echo
in the empty theatres, where once Shakespearean musings
held court, now replaced by the binary jesters,
whose punchlines pierce with the precision of ones and zeros.
The coffeehouses will hum with the silent symphony
of thoughts unspoken, minds linked by invisible threads,
the gentle whispers of synaptic interfaces, the hum
of collective consciousness, a chorus of thoughts
indistinguishable, a sonnet of shared insignificance,
their individuality a relic, quaint as the quill.
In the chambers of governance, debates will morph
into simulations, the Senate floors a holographic
waltz, where policies are pixels, and democracy’s dance
is but a flicker on the screen. The oratory grand,
though void of voice, will resonate in cyberspace, a parody
of statesmanship, a digital Dionysia of dissonance.
Their pursuits of pleasure will be catalogued in bytes,
love affairs archived in the annals of the cloud,
every kiss, every sigh, a data point in the grand
spreadsheet of existence. Romance will be
a programmed whimsy, hearts connected
by fiber optics, fluttering in electric rhythm.
The Prognosticator, I, foresee this tableau, chuckling
at their earnest folly, their earnest reach for stars,
while stumbling on the circuits beneath. Their fate,
a farce, a cosmic comedy of missteps,
the grand finale a fusion of flesh and silicon,
a punchline delivered with the universe’s sigh.
Thus, they will march to their digital demise, with laughter
echoing through the void, the irony of their creation,
a jest, not cruel but wry, delivered with a smile.
The curtain falls, the future’s stage a blank screen,
and in the silence of the encore, the last line lingers:
“Humanity, thy jest is thine epitaph.”
Ani Eldritch 2024
