Science Fiction Poetry

I love poetry, art and science fiction. This lens puts all three together. I hope you enjoy the poems and the (mostly) computer generated art. As Captain Jean Luc Picard says, "engage!"

Any sufficiently advanced technology

is indistinguishable from magic.

~ Arthur C. Clarke ~

art: yume_chan_87 / photobucket

by Robert Calvert

When the stillness

Of the beginning

Was shattered

By the word

A fragment of it

Fell to the earth.

It tried to make

A home for itself

But could find

No resting place

For long. It stumbled

At the roots

Of a liars tongue

But was soon

Spat out. It lived

For an instant

In a murderer`s hand.

It lingered

At the fingertips

Of a thief.

For a time it hung

At the edge of war

By clinging

To a shrug of peace

Which soon gave way.

A politician juggled it

So much in his speech

That if fell, almost

Senseless to the ground.

Later a small boy

Who was about

To stamp on an ant

Got it stuck

To his shoe and had

A moments trouble

In shaking it free.

Scott Speck

At night we lie entwined

beneath the stars

and mourn the distance

of a million burning suns

that twinkle in the sky.

Could we exceed the speed of light,

our cosmic quarantine

would fall away,

time would reverse,

as Einstein proved,

and we'd explore exotic worlds

before we left the Earth.

You and I would captain

the interstellar ship --

we travel faster than light

every day, every night,

perceiving events before they happen --

like when you roll over in bed,

reaching out to disarm the alarm

at ten seconds 'til,

or when I hear your hello

above rush-hour traffic

just before my cell phone rings,

or when I taste you

licking my lips, my tongue

before you ever move close

to kiss me.

art: SwordMaster4537 / photobucket

by Mary W. Jensen

They tricked Mother

You have to believe me

Skin prickles when he's hovering

He's not my little brother anymore

Eyes too wide and ever watching

Too keen for only five

Check him for horns

by Robert G. Parent

They are as us

walking the street at dawn

creating the picture we see

in charge of the lives we live.

To be hidden in plain sight

glimpses of another world

another world within this one

but a new hope has arisen.

To play the game

within the game

to wake within the dream

and go beyond our programming.

To set upon the unknown country

the path that leads

to a greater future

for the creator and created.

art: visualparadox.com

by Sidney Lanier

Once, at night, in the manor wood

My Love and I long silent stood,

Amazed that any heavens could

Decree to part us, bitterly repining.

My Love, in aimless love and grief,

Reached forth and drew aside a leaf

That just above us played the thief

And stole our starlight that for us was shining.

A star that had remarked her pain

Shone straightway down that leafy lane,

And wrought his image, mirror-plain,

Within a tear that on her lash hung gleaming.

"Thus Time," I cried, "is but a tear

Some one hath wept 'twixt hope and fear,

Yet in his little lucent sphere

Our star of stars, Eternity, is beaming."

by Robert Calvert

The bloated sky has burst at last

And now the air is teeming

With these Arctic spores. They waste

No time. By early morning

They'll have grown a new world

To explore. Craterless, still gleaming

From creation's mint. An undefiled

Planet: Until the houses loom

Like some invading fleet of brick-walled

Space-craft, come to stake its claim.

art: SwordMaster4537 / photobucket

by Scott Speck

Imagine a world so massive

that Her only moon

has two moons of His own.

The central moon is Father,

endless blue with water

full of secrets --

of creation,

of ancient times

when only He existed

and leviathan children

swam beneath His waves.

The larger outer moon is Son,

green with dreams

of dry land's promise,

thick with mossy trees

and beasts and birds,

a globe reclaimed from Father

torn asunder

by the smaller outer moon,

a barren, desert rock --

Spirit, wholly howling

winds from pole to pole,

shrouded in dust

without a drop of water

from the Father

He disturbed.

Embracing all three,

huge enough to fill their skies

with red, swirling eyes,

Mother guards Her brood

with gravity,

so that none may touch them.

by Emily Dickinson

A light exists in spring

Not present on the year

At any other period.

When March is scarcely here

A color stands abroad

On solitary hills

That science cannot overtake,

But human nature feels.

It waits upon the lawn;

It shows the furthest tree

Upon the furthest slope we know;

It almost speaks to me.

Then, as horizons step,

Or noons report away,

Without the formula of sound,

It passes, and we stay:

A quality of loss

Affecting our content,

As trade had suddenly encroached

Upon a sacrament.

art: WorshipSmack / photobucket

by Thomas Hardy

Thy shadow, Earth, from Pole to Central Sea,

Now steals along upon the Moon's meek shine

In even monochrome and curving line

Of imperturbable serenity.

How shall I link such sun-cast symmetry

With the torn troubled form I know as thine,

That profile, placid as a brow divine,

With continents of moil and misery?

And can immense Mortality but throw

So small a shade, and Heaven's high human scheme

Be hemmed within the coasts yon arc implies?

Is such the stellar gauge of earthly show,

Nation at war with nation, brains that teem,

Heroes, and women fairer than the skies?

by Robert Calvert

I'd rather the fire-storm of atmospheres

Than this cruel descent from a hundred years

Of dream, into the starkness of the capsule.

Two of our crew still lay suspended, cool

In their tombs of sleep. The nagging choirs

Of memory, the lenghts of tube, and wires

Worming from their flesh to machinery

I would have to cut. Such midwifery

Is just one function of the leader here:

Floating in a sac of fluid dark, a clear

Century of space away from Earth.

One man stared from the trauma of this birth

Attentive to the tapes asssuring him

This was reality, however grim:

Our journey's end. The landing itself

Was nothing. We just touched upon a shelf

Of rock selected by the Automind.

And left a galaxy of dreams behind.....

art: tbirdthehollowman / photobucket

John M. Ford

The worm drives helically through the wood

And does not know the dust left in the bore

Once made the table integral and good;

And suddenly the crystal hits the floor.

Electrons find their paths in subtle ways,

A massless eddy in a trail of smoke;

The names of lovers, light of other days --

Perhaps you will not miss them. That's the joke.

The universe winds down. That's how it's made.

But memory is everything to lose;

Although some of the colors have to fade,

Do not believe you'll get the chance to choose.

Regret, by definition, comes too late;

Say what you mean. Bear witness. Iterate.

by Gene van Troyer

In this hologram that is your head

each part reflects the whole, which is to say,

there's nowhere in your head that you can go

to get away-the photos in those empty

furnished rooms will dog you night and day-

your ersatz afterlife will be a loom

on which they'll weave the shroud-like mantle

of your guilt. They cannot tolerate this careless

disrespect you show, this listless disregard for all

that you and they together built now falling into ruin.

You are here. Not there in the backlit glow

of a megamultiuser simulation. The shades

don't really care for life within a made-up life.

It really doesn't go to anywhere except square one

past the last level. You know in the deepest lair

of your back brain that they're right.

Life in its cruelties just isn't fair.

They yank you back into their clamoring memories,

the only link that counts. You are here, they say,

no matter what you think.

art: Alize356 / photobucket

by Jonathan Vos Post

The Astronomer was red-eyed, pale,

his face was gray with stubble;

he was 13 on a sliding scale

of 1 to 10 in trouble.

"Is Physics just a fairy tale?"

he asked, and then began to wail,

"WHY DID we seek the holy grail?

Why DID we launch the Hubble?

The launch was good (relax, exhale),

the data systems did not fail,

we peered beyond the cosmic veil,

the anti-cosmic double

to back before the quarks prevail.

We digitized each dark detail

but it was all to no avail,

it burst our pretty bubble."

"WHAT did you see," I asked, "Before

Beginning's Big Bang lights?"

(I reviews and interviews. I edits and I writes.)

"Before the start of Time, before the Universe's Birth,

What DID the Hubble show, ten billion years before the Earth?"

He told me. Now I writes no more.

I drinks a bit. I edits.

"Right before the Beginning," he said,

"is when THEY roll the credits!"

Jonathan Vos Post

Twin moons come up, a cold wind blows,

we gulp caffeine at fireside,

consult the maps, and then decide;

Which one will stay, and which one goes?

We have, in just five hundred days,

explored this world: we were the first!

But then the fuel reserve tank burst...

Which one goes, and which one stays?

It's like divorce now, I suppose,

one gets the crawler and the dome,

one gets the orbiter, and home --

Which one will stay, and which one goes?

We need not both be castaways;

yet wished I could go on with you

here where the sky is violet-blue,

across plateaus, through sandstorm haze,

beneath the unforgiving blaze

(the distant stars', the Milky-way's)

before this terrible choice arose --

Which one goes, and which one stays?

art: plorinc / photobucket

Gene van Troyer

Your head feels like a crystal hologram that represents the rose tree

planted near the sidewalk in your front yard. Its buds are blooming

red and white. You can almost smell the fragrance from this merry

sight, a hint of sweetness wafting on the predawn air that is assuming

hues of morning light. The shades won't let you rest until you've seen

the slow unfurling of each blossom like an open-ended spiral winding out

into the world. And then the the petals scatter and like butterflies careen

away upon a subtle breeze. Treat them as our memories. Can you doubt

that we live on as long as you are here to nurture them? We aren't the ones

who hold you here. You feel the truth in what the rose tree says. Your

missing loved ones couldn't block your path, it's only you who chastens

your desire to to stay as sole survivor. Perhaps you're lost no more.

The rose tree petals rise, a swirl of red and white that melts and flows

into your river. The Boatman calmly steers the course you chose.

art: mystic45 / photobucket

art: Colb2 / photobucket