Poem ‘Pat 1.0’

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Marlene Dietrich photograph
Marlene Dietrich photograph (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Pat 1.0

A girl from the future, she’d said,
a real chic-chic-whirr!
Pat was her name, dark high heels and
clinging pink dress, a row of
little red buttons before me
which (the paperwork said), would ‘lead
to other worlds’.
So I pressed the bottom button, a thirty
second hologram projected from her eye,
a précis
from my time to hers: “My god!”
I said, all-a-gaga,
“she really makes President?”
Button two appealed to my
sense of history. “I can be
any figure you like,” she giggled. So
I thought of Genghis Khan and
recoiled, I mean
I fell to the ground—
the stench of his breath and
bloody blade! so real,
but even he had a human eye.
Button three was ‘anywhere, anytime’,
so there we were in a darkening
Berlin bar, surrounded by
art deco, lots of nods and smiles;
I felt the spirit keenly, the zeitgeist
over my shoulder, whispering: ‘seize
the moment, this
brief,
precious time’.
And then she stood and sang for me
like Piaf, posed
like Dietrich, sizzled
like Kitt, singing how old fashioned she was but
I just wasn’t a millionaire, although
“zat, darlink,” she purred, with a brush
of mink on my cheek, “vill be easily
fixed!”
I felt
a little like Faustus before
Helen of Troy, though
she was no Mephistopheles;
more legion, everything rolled into one app.
All this time her top
button had intrigued the most.
“Go on— pat it!” she said, smoking
cross legged.
“You see?” She kicked
off a heel, letting
down her futured hair.
“Yes,” she whispered, pulling me
close, “and I, my sweet,
am just the beta version.” I looked
briefly
down on Metropolis
from floor 159, so brave,
so new.
Some things, clearly,
would never change

Poem © copyright David F. Barker 2012

Published by Ciscography

Creator, Writer, Blogger.

Published

59 thoughts on “Poem ‘Pat 1.0’”

  2. a real chic-chic-whirr…haha….see a woman like this is a scary for me…i dont know if i want everything i ever dreamed to be possible honestly….and there is just something haunting to me about loving an artificial life form…

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  6. I enjoyed this, David. ONLY the beta version! Who knows what additional features the real version will have! Your poem intrigued me.

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  8. This is a GLORIOUS read, and a total escape into the most entertaining little sidetrip my brain has taken today! What a cool idea in response to the prompt. Hmmmm….where would I go if I had such a button?

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  14. Pingback: Poem ‘Pat 1.0′ « thebleedingpen

  20. You brought us into limitless dimensions David! It would have been fun. Where can I find one? Wonderful imagery! Great write!

    Hank

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  23. I enjoy how this begins with the simple grace of following a trail of buttons into the complexity you have created that remains harmonic to the reading. Well penned ~ Rose

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  43. A real chic chic whir? Hahaa I need someone to take my photo properly lol! Excellent candid little story here David. Rather enjoyed the read 😉

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  49. This is great, David. I love that it feels a bit historic and futuristic at the same time with your mix of details. Very fine bit of writing, and fun to read and imagine.

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  50. Wonderful fun with the buttons, the virtual reality, and the variety of fantasies you confess here, DF! (tee,hee!) Quite the jolly read, dear man!

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  54. Wow! A science fiction poem that actually works. I love science fiction, but in poetry it never comes off. Somehow the poet tries to do science fiction the way they do in the novels, and the result is prose without zip or fun. This piece has so much of each that I am in awe. The imagination soars as you push buttons and flirt with an app and zing through history where Genghis Khan almost knocks you over with the stench of his breath and his bloody blade. If your writing gets any better we’ll have to find this particular app, push a button on her dress, and send you into old anthologies in libraries hidden on the moon in order to protect them from the Old Stoogies who took over the earth. There is inspiration in this poem. Inspiration!

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  56. Incredible write , David… past and future well woven through each other in another dimension. Cool.

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    Like

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