Poetry

Drifting

whirs, whispers

create unseen currents

form ripples across the darkness

lines, creases, folds

imbued with implied spaces

things I cannot see

yet know to be there

thin threads fight a losing battle

struggle to hold the line of the night

dazzled by the brilliance of their foe,

they fail to contain the enemy,

now pouring through in hordes

my first line of defense

is overwhelmed, begins to glow

the message of their defeat

slips silently through space

to rest on me

1917

The night window opens and you see it:

a star shell glowing, lighting up the night.

Its beauty begins with its first firing,

a sound so different from the normal death

that stalks every man in trenches from here

to the upper coasts. German, Brit, and French

all look up to see the sudden cascade,

brilliance that cannot fully be described.

But this brilliance brings dangers: all too soon

the dark-lurking sniper will see your head

tilted up too high to be protected.

The machine gun fills the air with a swarm

and the artillery shell cares not if

your family will ever see you again.

On My Complete and Utter Dominance of the Humans, Their Pitiful World, and Everything In It

I am

Bird

I am grandiose, majestic

the humans, though tall

either dare not look at me

and my power, or watch

with great admiration

I am

Bird

My fabulous wings flare

as I take flight, fowl below

flustered by my fantastic forays,

my famous, forbidding form

as they forage for food

I am

Bird

This pond is my pond

those paddling ducks

are just piddling pretenders

I am the Preeminent One

perspicacious and powerful

I am

Bird

I patrol my land with watchful eye

alert for any attempted attacks

on my sovereignty or person

and if you ever cross me

you will egret it, for

I am

Bird

Landing in the Eye

Landing was difficult, as always.

Finding a landing site in an area

with resources but no storms

requires a combination of foreknowledge

and finesse, anticipating danger with both

data and gut. Still, this wasn’t our first time

landing on Sol III. We knew the drill– avoid

the coasts no matter how rich they seemed:

hurricanes plagued the shores and sent

two hundred mile per hour winds and hundred foot waves

slashing through the area. For the same reason

ocean landings were unadvisable– conditions at sea

were even worse than on land. Even though oil

could easily be seen saturating the surface of the water,

no sane crew would attempt retrieval. Landing on a derrick

was out of the question, and skimming oil

from the surface brought more risks

than most seasoned crews like to take.

Only the new or the desperate would risk

parking a burning thruster anywhere near

the black mass of ready-to-burn fuel.

Moving inland brought its own risks– where coast

meant waves of water, inland meant waves of fire:

roiling infernos spit burning trees across the land.

No fire line could hold back the rage of the air.

At its peak, the famous Middle Territories Fire

stretched some one thousand miles north to south,

lasting for months before it ran out of fuel.

As one of the better retrieval crews, we managed

to find a spot in one of the few temperate zones left,

ambient temperatures reaching as low

as ninety degrees fahrenheit on a good day.

Our goal was to find anything of interest from the ones

who used to live on the planet. Most paper burned or crumbled

long ago, and digital records would have little real information

after centuries without maintenance. Still, our client thought

we could find something worth retrieving, so we went. Perhaps

we would find some electronic device that could be reasonably repaired

or restored to some semblance of functionality. Buyers love antique

garbage, especially when it comes from exotic worlds and dead species.

If we were very lucky, we might even find a living animal somewhere,

hopefully one not exposed to the corruption of extreme radiation.

Still, we only expected to find one of the usual bone fields,

assuming the previous expedition hadn’t picked them clean

or burned it while entering or exiting the planet.

It has been a decade since Sol III had been discovered,

a hellworld once populated– or so the archeologists claimed–

by bipedal primates. It seemed like the indigenous population

had focused their efforts on energy and warfare to the exclusion

of basic planetary maintenance. They had turned their home

into an unlivable wreck but turned to the stars too late to escape.

Modern political scientists emphasized that such a species

would best be avoided, and their self-extinction was truly a blessing

for the other groups. Despite their folly, I wondered what they were like,

what they were really like, beyond the missiles and guns.

Did they smile and laugh and dance to their music?

Did they sing in unison with the stars?

Did they paint pictures of nature and of each other?

Did they have an emotion called love?

Perhaps they did, but as our shuttle lands

reality returns:

it really doesn’t matter now.

Gloaming

genie in a bottle

hope in a box

etched “Pandora”

a light, then dark

We build our empire, throwing ourselves through space

you are the fly

Cementing ourselves as important

you are the firefly

We have come ten trillion miles

stumbling through invisible web

Carved our names into the galaxy

built long before

We are not the first, but we are the best

we are the spider

We have traveled across the stars

the predator

All we find is the ruins of lesser kinds

the pre/dator

This galaxy is ours to take

the ones who come before

Where they failed, we have succeeded

the ones who predate

They are the foreign dead; we, the still living

the ones who hunger

Their worlds are ruins; ours, shining beacons in the night

for all they can see

Displaying our magnificence for all to see

for their prey

for you