"A modern Sodom, reaching for the key
to artificial consciousness with zeal;
thus we, who live in base idolatry
to Mammon make our technical appeal.
The poor be damned! The hungry and the wretched
may eat the cake of capital returns;
and he who is in man the most invested
reap only sorrow as the planet burns....
Such great antediluvial conceit!
Technologies may change; mistakes repeat."
https://seanpatrick.phd/2026/02/01/sonnet-from-an-antediluvian/
"I do not think that I shall miss the world
when I have gone on to whatever rest;
and in what ditch my body may be hurled
I’ll rot away, forever unimpressed.
I’ll meet my maker, I suppose, and ask
what it was for, and whether I did well;
and then I’ll take the architect to task
and I’ll be damned if I don’t give Him hell.
I do not think that I shall miss the Earth,
and of its denizens I’d keep but one..."
"Why waste my thoughts in memory of the past
when I could spend them here and now, with you?
Although the present’s promise doesn’t last,
the love that lasts one moment’s far more true.
Let all our expectations be forgot,
and let us love in instants now and ever:
and let each brief ephemeron of thought
unite we two, and past attachments sever.
Our history is of no consequence,
for love exists within the present tense."
"What came from me to counterweigh my cost?
Was it some novel theorem, some device
that lingered while its inspiration’s lost?
I doubt that such could justify its price.
No, now my mind is dust, and all its fruit
has rotted on the vine, except for one:
my love for you, now rendered resolute
as branches of a tree absorbing sun.
In death I have forsaken all endeavor;
except for you, whose light shall bloom forever."
"Regarding genes, it seems that the adroitest
of those who bear them ought to be their sires;
and yet the fit are simply they whose coitus
led into more. The Darwinists are liars!..."
The world! How strange and beautiful its shape,
that thing which lives without and never wanes;
and over which that canvas has been draped,
experience, which we hold in our brains.
It hangs like fabric over all we’ve known,
but empty air by one swift pull is shown.
"O vicious world, that’s built on bloody stones!
How many gentle innocents have died
within your savage garden, strewn with bones?
How many times has beauty bowed to force
upon the curve of evolution’s course?"
"This body is a wick, a filament
that glows in concert with a passing soul,
and will be ash alone when it is spent.
A flash of light, a shadow in the dark,
that’s all we’re given – just a second’s spark.
This world’s a room that is one moment lit,
illuminated for some hidden goal,
and darkened with the moving-on of wit..."
Figured the least I could do is give an example, here's an old one for #SonnetSunday
"My eyes gaze into cold and barren space
and see my emptiness reflected there -
I’m comforted, somehow I know my place -
a speck of dust adrift on cosmic air,
a nothing, a scintilla spark afloat.
I lay and feel my littleness laid bare:
a trillionth molecule, a billionth vote,
a voice that sings into the background noise,
a grain of sand, a drop of rain, a mote."
https://seanpatrick.phd/2024/01/31/sonnet-for-a-sailing-ship/
"...The lambdas of our half-lives happen fast,
and we, like isotopes, must all decay.
We fall to pieces, bit by rotting bit,
and nothing stands in time’s relentless way.
And what, if anything, do we emit?
The photon of a spirit, gone at last."
Sean Patrick
