A dark sci-fi slam poem about death
+ A double radio appearance tonight at 7pm!
Fair warning, the poem is quite dark.
Hi all.
Before we get to the poem, I’m on https://fabradiointernational.com/ At 7PM tonight (UK time), most likely on channel 1. Myself and Stephen Armstrong will be interviewing the Women For Iran group and Rebecca Ryder from SameShitDifferentBrain. The show is a mix of improv comedy, topical stuff, and discussion about what’s going on in the world right now. It’s great fun.
The poem
I’m always on the fence about posting poetry at all, because I just don’t know if anyone will want to see it. So let me know. I don’t write the kind of stuff that’s popular on social media because I simply have not had enough exes, and I’m pretty confident everyone here is here for writing advice, comedy and sci-fi stories. So if you’re not interested in the poetry, let me know and I’ll move it somewhere else. Poetry could get its own sub-section, so anyone not interested could unsubscribe to it without losing access to the stories. I think that’s how Substack works anyway… I’ll ask them.
M.A.I.D
Set in a twisted near-future dystopia where Canada’s ‘Medical Assistance In Dying’ scheme crawls its way to the UK and evolves into something worse. I did say it was dark.
we’re a brave new world
with a new world order
where no body is illegal
and no country has a border
and everyone is equal, and life is sublime
and if it isn’t we’ll give you a deadline
and if you’re too sick, we’ve got a little prick
because why live feeble when you can take the needle?
and if your condition stops you from seeing your friend
you can visit us for a shortcut to the end
and if you’ve got a mental illness
that keeps you out of work
we can ferry you into an inescapable chillness
beyond that final hypnagogic jerk
it’s the modern equivalent of cutting the brakes on your wheelchair
and going for a nice long walk by the coast
and we know it’s hard, no it’s really not fair
to be solid when you could be a ghost
it’s a final solution for the weary worker
a horror story to be turned into tear-jerker
they’ll tell it good in Hollywood when you’re not yet cold
they’ll write some pithy dialogue about how you never got old
they’ll make it with that actor you despise
and he’ll do your signature ‘dead-face’ and stare out with vacant eyes
and later get fired for biting the director’s thighs
in the year twenty-five twenty-five
“In the year twenty-five twenty-five, when the poor are no longer alive
when we helped all the disabled die, you will cry
in year 2595, only the richest fucks will survive
only the wretched zombies will thrive in their hive”
and back down here it’s a match m.a.i.d in heaven
and that’s where you’re going, with all the symptoms you’re showing
you see, there’s not much we can do,
(outside of upping your disability pay or helping you find purpose
but let’s be honest mate, to society, you’re not much more than surplus)
you’re depressed, badly dressed
and perpetually in a state of itching unrest
but we’ll make it civil, you can take the drug at home
if you’d rather die alone, or you could come to the clinic
don’t be a cynic
you can’t criticise what you’ve not tried
and guess what, you can’t sue us once you’ve died
here at the home for medical assistance in suicide
yes, at the clinic we’ll help you slip into something more comfortable
like the icy embrace of death
we’ll make each moment tweetable, as you draw your final breath
and as you shudder toward oblivion
with each hypnagogic jerk
we’ll turn and say to your friends
“Such a shame he couldn’t find work”
because really, what’s the point?
of being poor, disabled and depressed
when you could get it all off your chest
by having a government assisted cardiac arrest
and when you’re gone you can meet god
who I won’t capitalise because I hate the sod
and maybe he hates us too, and hates poems that end
prematurely because the author signed up to the
…
If you were affected by the message in this poem, please remember.
There’s no harm in trying for Medical Assistance In Dying
Phillip Carter is an award-winning comedy poet and Science Fiction author. His talk show, the Phillip Carter show, picks up clever people and shakes them until funny things fall out, and his books and free stories can be found at realphillipcarter.substack.com
I’ve included my little bio there as this poem was just accepted into an anthology about the cost of living crisis. I’m very excited. I haven’t submitted anything to anywhere for years. I’m also going to be yelling it at strangers on the first Thursday of December, potentially.
So that’s the poem. I have missed writing stuff this dark. I’m really pleased with it. It’s brutal and doesn’t waste many words in its delivery, unlike my more serious cosmic stuff.
It’s also a good excuse for a reference to this beautiful tune.
Career update
On twitter I’ve been using the hashtag #wbthdiary for about a year to chronicle my efforts to becoming a financially stable author. I like to hope it will be useful to some future fan, but in reality I use it myself to remember what I got up to last week. It used to be a daily thing, then I realised I was headed at lightspeed toward burnout, so I now update it as and when something significant happens or if I’ve collected a few adventures, which is usually every three days.
I finished up a fresh audiobook reading of my short story Tardigrade last night using Audacity, which I just redownloaded after not using it for years. You can read and listen to the story here. The story has now been renamed The Professor and The Tardigrade, and the tardigrade has been given a name. Clementine. I’m also ramping up his utter desperation for a mate, as I find it plays well against the drier parts of the story. My good friend Michael has been helping me develop it, which is much appreciated. Hi Michael!
I’m looking into arts grants and business loans for Halfplanet Press, which is going to be expanding into publishing more books soon.
I interviewed A.J.Pagan last night about his debut novel Brian, Created intelligence. That’s a lot of fun. Just imagine if Jurassic Park was about creating brains in vats rather than dinosaurs, and the brains were told they were computer programs, and there was a big ethical/philosophical dilemma at the core of the book. Sounds good right? I’ll be posting that interview here soon, and on youtube and everywhere else.
I’ve looked at Draft2Digital for my eBooks and audiobooks, and will be releasing the short story Whale (from Seven Stories about Time Travel) as a free eBook before the release of the full paperback.
I joined a new writing group that convenes on Monday nights, right near where I do radio, which is convenient. It’s got a decent mix of people in it too, which is an absolute necessity if you want detailed feedback (always good to bring a story that gets people arguing, I think).
Mum got me a new shoulder bag for my adventures, pictures coming soon. It has eight pouches, four times what my old one had. I am interested in finding out how this affects my project storage, as I carried three notebooks at a time in the last one.
You can answer honestly, my hurt feelings won’t come up in the next post. As always, trying to refine this newsletter for you all.
What to expect in the next post
A poem about my hurt feelings.
Just kidding, something about my interview with A.J.Pagan and his new sci-fi novel, perhaps a full upload and text intro about it.
A new story. Well, an old story, but you’ve not seen it yet.
A pre-release page for the Seven Stories about Time Travel Kickstarter.
See you next time!
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