The Iron in Me

A human hunts down machines in the future.

In the moon’s beam
Their metal bodies gleam
They march through the streets
A man obsequiously greets

“The malcontent is about”
I distinctly hear the man shout
“Where is this unwanted?”
Asks the captain, his head slanted

“He disappeared in one of the houses above”
I see the captain roughly aside the man shove
“Into the houses above, fan out”
I hear the captain summarily shout

The robots immediately jump upward
They land on the stories lightly as a bird
The people fall to their knees
“Vacate and go stand by the trees”

The people are scared, a couple of the babies start to cry
The captain drawls, “Babies who make a ruckus we like to fry”
Muffling their sobs, the people hurriedly rush out and down
The robots are on the hunt; holds its breath the whole town

The building is vacated
Of the people the robots hated
Now they are free to search and kill
The man who goes against their will

They are in the houses going room by room
Until one of them finds me; my gun goes boom
There is a hole in the robot’s chest
Glitching, he falls to his final rest

Others are drawn by the sound
They swiftly to the room rebound
I jump to the adjacent balcony without a sound
When they reach, I am nowhere to be found

I shimmy down a pipe as the robots the room search
I enter the building again with a running lurch
A robot keeps careful watch on the stairs
I stab with my laser knife before at me he stares

As he tumbles lifeless, I hold him and break his fall
I disappear in a flat as out comes their captain tall
“He is not here. Let’s search in the buildings nearby”
As the robots come out, one lets out a startled cry

The robots notice, on the stairs, their dead mate
“On his blood, I am going to my thirst slake”
The captain says and points to the nearest flat
“He must be in there lying low like a rat”

The robots approach, I run toward the door
I shoot two rapidly and jump holding one more
I fall on his body on the ground and put bullets through his eyes
The light crazily flickers in his eyes and then forever dies

The robots are shooting from above, but I am not in the spot
They run below; I cut one at the shin, falls on my knife the bot
Before the others can reach, I disappear in the shadows once more
I stab, shoot, break, and bludgeon taking down robots four

They are searching the streets in panic mode
The deaths of their mates don’t for them well bode
The hunters are now the hunted
The tall captain is looking stunted

The robots swiftly converge on me as I whistle loudly from a lane
They find me standing in middle of the road like I am no more sane
My hands are empty; there is no sign of even the presence of a gun
The captain says, “Skewering this human pest is going to be fun”

The captain followed by the other robots menacingly moves toward me
I take off the cover of a machine near; a huge plasma canon the captain can clearly see
He hits the ground as I turn on the rest of the robots the full canon blast
The robots are blown to pieces; remains alive the captain of the robots last

He gets up and shoots bullets one after another into my body
I am thrown jerkily back and fall down in a posture shoddy
He comes near and says grimly, “I got you human filth at the end”
And then he sees a vision that does shivers through his body send

Dusting myself lazily, I get up from the ground
He glitching asks, “How are you not dead found?”
In reply, I unbutton my jacket; the moon gleams on my metal body too
“Your body is made of metal ... how? ... this is something entirely new

By now, you should have been in the morgue”
“I am made of metal too; I am a cyborg”
I say and shoot him between the eyes with my plasma gun
As the captain falls dead with a thud, I think it was all good fun

Tonight, Earth comes to know that the machines can be defeated
Tonight, the first blow against our oppressors has been struck
Tonight, the hunters come to know that they can be hunted too
Tonight, the resistance comes alive