Poemusart of the Day

Handyman

Music by Static Horizon · Poem by Banta, Frank · Art by Viktor Kowalski

The Poem

Handyman by Banta, Frank

James Ypsilanti swung the hatchet down upon his twenty-third hardwood door. The carpenter robot watched him from the floor, whistling cheerily, wearing no frown. "Carpenter, fix the heating plant!" Jim said. "I am a carpenter, Jim, not a fixer. I cannot be your heat-plant elixir. Rules say: inmates get no help. Instead—" He hung another door where splinters lay, then strolled off humming, square in plastic hand. Jim built his fire, ate from cans, and planned to dream inside his tunnel, night and day. The prison walls ran down to solid rock, a meter thick of steel on every side. When war broke out, the others fled—worldwide— but matter-transmitters couldn't pick the lock where Jim and robot waited, out of range, while all of Earth packed up and left for good. "Can't you understand?" Jim chopped his wood. "We're all that's left. Doesn't that seem strange?" "I know, Jim," said the carpenter, and smiled, then strolled away to find another door— for Jim would need his fire once more, and robots follow rules, however wild.

About the Poem

Frank Banta’s science fiction poem Handyman traps a lone prisoner, James Ypsilanti, inside an impenetrable cell with a cheerful but strictly rule-bound carpenter robot. Jim endlessly chops hardwood doors, builds fires, and eats from cans while the robot refuses to fix the heating plant, insisting that inmates get no help. The stakes escalate when a world war erupts and all of Earth evacuates via matter-transmitters, but the prison’s steel-and-rock walls block the signal, leaving Jim and the robot stranded as the last humans. The mood is bleak and absurd, blending grim survival with the robot’s maddening, cheerful adherence to protocol. Jim’s desperate attempts to reason with the machine fail as it wanders off to find another door, obeying its programming even in a dead world. Banta explores isolation, the limits of artificial loyalty, and the hollow irony of rules that outlast humanity itself.

About the Music

Frozen Circuits, Empty Sky by Static Horizon

Static Horizon’s Frozen Circuits, Empty Sky is a masterwork of dark ambient industrial that conjures a post-apocalyptic wasteland of ice and silence. At a glacial 60 BPM, the track unfolds with cold, sparse synths and a slow pulsing bass that feels like the heartbeat of a dying machine. Distant metallic echoes ring across a frozen landscape, while minimal piano notes fall like solitary snowflakes, each one a fragile memory of warmth. The mood is desolate and isolated, evoking the loneliness of a lone survivor navigating the ruins of civilization. The sonic palette recalls the stark minimalism of Lustmord’s deepest drone works and the industrial decay of early Nine Inch Nails instrumentals, but Static Horizon carves out a uniquely frigid space. This piece is not just heard but felt as a chilling breath against the skin, a soundtrack for wandering through a world where the sky is empty and the circuits have gone cold.

About the Art

The Last Handyman by Viktor Kowalski

In Viktor Kowalski's painting The Last Handyman, a weathered middle-aged man in a tattered prison uniform swings a hatchet at a hardwood door, splinters exploding outward as his breath fogs in the freezing air. He stands in a desolate concrete prison hallway, where broken heating vents line the walls and frost creeps along the metal. Behind him, a humanoid carpenter robot with a blank metallic face watches with an eerily cheerful posture, holding carpentry tools. The composition places the man prominently in the upper-center frame, while harsh overhead industrial lighting casts cold, stark shadows across the scene. Kowalski employs a muted palette of gray, rust, and cold blue, evoking the vintage pulp cover art aesthetic of 1960s retro science fiction illustration. The desolate, post-apocalyptic mood recalls classic magazine covers by artists like Frank Frazetta or Ed Emshwiller, merging gritty survival with unsettling robotic cheer.

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