Poem in which the dove that Roy Batty releases at the end of Blade Runner develops an unquenchable thirst for power and becomes Twitter

I didn’t ask for a hand that has made murder to clamp down my wings and tail feathers

as the ubermensch that caught me attained samadhi with his final breath and murmured some self-help tripe about tears and rain —

nor did I ask to be read as some kind of metaphor for the unfettered soul, a pure white flutter against a grey, dystopian sky.

I wanted none of it, you can keep your Power of Now, loser, I wanted the world, I wanted the future,

so I flapped so hard I found myself a brother to the sun and gazed down at the planet’s curve and then plummeted

not as a beak and feathers but as an idea, the will to power clothed in the livery of a chirpy white birdy

and landed, slap bang, inside the grey matter of a child named Jack

where I would nest up cosily, beyond the hammering humility of the tear-heavy rain

and wait for my moment, for the endless web that couldn’t contain me.

Presidencies, celebrity, infamy would be mine to grant. A little war? Why not.

Liberation too, it’s all the same to me. I’m scattering crumbs across the cybersphere. Tuppence a bag.