Terminus

Terminus

Terminus

When Arnie sliced a transept from his own burgeoning arm
the inventor went loose all the way through.
You could see it in his face, clear as a dolly zoom,
that he would do anything the Terminator said:
and Arnie said he ought to quit inventing.

Even then – a boy joy-maddened with explosions,
the adrenal-squeezing soundtrack, my private crush
on Edward Furlong – I could pick holes in it.
Would topping one inventor really halt invention? Still,
it was a flick worth making the leap for.

Not yet unstoppable as Arnie,
I’m halted at Hardington, hemmed in outside Heathrow, doubting
my own innocence. The planes we’d hoped to cull
buzz overhead. We rally, sing
protest without Sarah Connor’s conviction.

I’d half kneel to pray to the future wiser me:
Couldn’t you send back a Terminator?
Not only would He lop the knees off those police cocks
picking round our squats, but take His pound
of flesh and lay it on the table:

How the machines, having what we’ve always dreamed –
the ability to fly to the high ground
when the ice caps dissolve –
take for themselves what’s left of the world,
leaving nothing for us and the bystander animals –

But perhaps, as I’ve mentioned, it wouldn’t matter what he said.