I'm sorry, Mr. Bradbury. I really am.
I know it's our job to remember and start again,
But your war was over in an instant,
Not a lifetime.
Excision is too kind a fate for this world,
For excision implies a clear boundary between sick and well,
Some part that can keep on living free of what ailed it.
But the future dies a death of a thousand cuts.
This rotting wet newspaper takes an agonizingly long time to crumble, somehow,
And you're not getting anything out of it afterwards--what could you?
I'm just...so very goddamn tired
Of being bothered.
Bother the comfortable and comfort the bothered, they say,
But it's only the comfortable who read, isn't it?
Everyone else doesn't have the education, poor dears, never got the chance, such a shame,
Or else they're too busy surviving and doing...whatever they do, down there.
That's why cis straight white men aren't writing
For the bothered.
Though to be fair, it's not your fault--
You thought you were writing fiction, not the news
Of a lifetime thence.
It needed to be said, back then,
And gods only know it still needs saying now,
But when the fire alarm has been going off for 70 years
And nobody's moved an inch,
If the smoke inhalation doesn't get you
The headache will.
I think both of us wish
You hadn't been right.