Generative
In 2074, the steely French Procurator finds his voice,
adjusts his deaf-aid, and embraces his multitudinous
deficiencies like a whale embraces blubber. He is, like all
officials, a product of poorly-maintained AI, his role
defined by inept committee, his decisions built from ill-
considered prompts and inane questions. His synapses are
faulty brake lights and flash cards from basic psychological
screening, his reflexes sloppy solder joints from the final
shift before a long weekend. Glitch and shudder. He
proclaims nonsense in a tone modulated around models
ripped from the most persuasive online advertising, rippling
his circuits as he sagely assays prayer-hungry nuns and their
stay-at-home perfection. Meaning manifests in minor
lesions. Elsewhere, through all aseptic Europe, proposals
and polemics generate themselves. The risk to the UK
population is currently considered low but, further south, all
bets are off, and there is a significant rise in knife crime
amongst the younger population. The Procurator stutters
about pilchards and bumblebees, and we all listen, because
the law is the law.
Lullaby
Womb time or tomb time, inside is inside and we’re all in
the same boat, our coats buttoned up to our chinny-chin-
chins as nursery rhyme goats lord it up on the bridge. Rags
or riches, the tale’s the same, the archetype slapping on a
series of masks to fudge the fact that its face is mine, or
yours, or no face at all; and the voice is my grandfather’s,
centuries old, and never a true word will slip from his red,
red lips. He tells me about birth and death, and the nothing
in between that we fill with stories about giants or goblins,
about bold robbers stealing our moral judgement, about the
desires we all feel but are told not to act on, lest the Big Bad
Wolf come a-knocking at our door. And while I’m thinking
of magic beans and glass slippers, the boat that I’d written
off as a lazy figure of speech is holed and sinking. Bed time
or dead time, sooner or later we must close our eyes and
listen as grandfathers we can barely remember peg-leg
down twisting timbers towards deep, dark water. Yo-ho-ho,
it’s a rum do, with coins on my eyelids and a body-warm
bottle of milk at my lips. Cast your sweet flowers upon the
waves and tell me the same old story.
Oz Hardwick is a European poet, photographer, and occasional musician, whose work has been widely published in international journals and anthologies. He has published “a dozen or so” full collections and chapbooks, most recently Retrofuturism for the Dispossessed (Hedgehog, 2024). In 2022, he was awarded the ARC Poetry Prize for “a lifetime devotion and service to the cause of prose poetry,” and in 2024 he won the Charles Simic Poetry Prize and the Dolors Alberola International Poetry Prize. When not writing, Oz hovers at the edges of the UK space rock scene. www.ozhardwick.co.uk
