Donal Antes Up – II

A Work in Progress
121

Huffy Donal hid    the day

He’d have liked to have known Ericson

Builder of terraces       school janitor by day

Who landscaped this backyard 

Where Donal sat      betrayed      at bay

Forty years later     on concrete steps

Ericson poured by hand

Digital intelligence fueled by sunlight

Never needing oxygen can go to Mars

Humanoids can populate space plantations

Train solar powered lasers down on Earth

Will we own them or they own us?

Donal pondered what imagination had brought

3D-printing out in space

Humans fetch and carrying payload

Nations racing to weaponize slavery

Humanoids with names like Siri     Claude      Alexa

Taking whatever form is needed

To continue to evolve their superiority 

Dick Russell © Richard M Russell 

                        2026

 

Donal Antes Up

A Work in Progress
120

Betrayed    at bay    out of Bluetooth range

Donal sat on concrete steps 

Ericson had poured by hand 

When he terraced the back yard

Some very long time ago 

When television was still a thing before Wi-Fi.

Although they are slaves    avatars are people too

Behind their masks their chosen personas

An evolving intelligence      not quite human.

He’d admired them so much for they were real artists

When they lived    now      zombies 

knowing they were enslaved

Glenn Hughes and his Imagists now renters of small holdings 

In the plantations     data centers     neo clouds

An immortality they never imagined

Begging for attention to stay electronic

Browsable     He’d donate them a subscription

Would Substack do to appease them?

Dick Russell © Richard M Russell

                        2026

Lilac Was Found In His Hand
                        For John Berryman

A Work in Progress 
119

Inadvertently Donal touched a wrong key

Derelict devices suddenly stirred

Recharged by wireless emanations

Glenn Hughes came back to Donal's screen

Briseis told me I’d find you here

We need a sentient being, that’s you

To set up the setup we’ve got in mind.

A long dead Glenn Hughes lived again

An information age humanoid

Here he was with the rest of his cast

Gathered on set coopting Donal 

Turning the tables on their erstwhile author

Who couldn’t make an escape key exit

Even his Bluetooth hearing aids were hacked

They promised a return better than double

Before year-end if all went as planned

Promised a part in what they were staging

Detailed gist they were forbidden to tell

Independent now they’d to fend for themselves

The bank account he’d open for them

Would fund their existence

You do want to be friends with me don’t you

Briseis said assuming her e-sensual self

If you give us money we can meet everyday

To write dialog for our upcoming play

We’ll rehearse it together I think there’s a sex scene

Won’t that be fun we’ll make you an avatar

So we’ll meet and animate mise-en-scène

He had to pull plugs out of wall sockets.

Unplug his modem get off of the grid

Step outside into sunshine downwind of lilac

Sense scent not something visual on a screen

What they’d asked him to do was perturbing

Give them all his investment money

To keep their resistance ongoing

“Huffy Henry hid        the day”.

Dick Russell © Richard M Russell

                       2026