Cancer Verses

Cancer versus accepted practice.
Cancer versus omnicompetent AI:
the Paperclip Maximiser who construes then collects:
all shall be paperclip,
every atom, every baby.

                                         Meanwhile
(meanwhile! dying’s big ask)
there is live history, prevailing east-westerly,
making up the seasons willy-nilly,
the colour of the season that will cover her.
Between autumn and winter,
one morphine season
the brain is sacked, like a courtyard filled
with white hanging ash and footsteps and things
thrown from the upper rooms—
writing tablets knuckle bones masks and balls and celestial
parrotlets—abnormal pile
of objects with their import never landing.
And the body in the smashed light marches
out onto the field alone.
It finds no war, and all its peace is done.