on an unremarkable planet
Contessa Isabela fluttered a manicured hand.
Divers divas and devices,
glorified in dullness.
I crave novelty.
We’ll send someone to Planet Sauria
whence no-one has returned.
We might get lucky this time.
And you there, skulking in the shadows,
don’t think that I can’t see you.
You’ll be the one,
don’t forget your camera.
~/~
My heart is pounding slivers,
my thoughts are ashen
photographs of thoughts,
my fingers tremble, key the launch.
~/~
the Saurian capital
I remember: a small discomfort on the journey
when my shuttle flamed and burned;
Isaura dressed in pastels who led me to
a skylight view above the Saurian glass,
and showed me how to work the dishwasher.
I remember: we were once inside,
her bolts of silk, her balsa craft
and my essentiality—
a discarded silver space suit,
blackened at the edges;
glasses, multifocal;
the ways that I pretended to be.
No biologics or metalogics,
we were sand grains blown along the shore
when the wind does not desire
their passage to the land or to the sea.
Our boundaries were Cartesian boxes,
frameworked minds,
through which we pass so easily now.
Isaura told me everyone has increments to light,
and
We’re flocks of rhyming leaves
lost in our own descriptions.
Look at you
with your inedited
energies and desires.
Soon we’ll spin invisible rivers,
involutes in linear dependence.
~/~
above the Saurian skyline
Solid is real,
vaporous is reverie,
by appearance and assumption.
The heavy always dream the light.
That was what I thought before I knew.
We dreamed them
—the solid Saurons—
their bricks and timber,
their concrete dens,
their playground puddles.
They were never real
and they call their planet ‘Earth.’
artwork
sauron dreams (detail above and below)
Fantasize all you want, but don’t forget to do the dishes! 🙂
“Isaura dressed in pastels who led me to
a skylight view above the Saurian glass,
and showed me how to work the dishwasher.”
____
I love the feel of this stanza, esp. Involutes in linear dependence… Whew.
“We’re flocks of rhyming leaves
lost in our own descriptions.
Look at you
with your inedited
energies and desires.
Soon we’ll spin invisible rivers,
involutes in linear dependence.”
Fantasies will not clean the plates. 🙂
Glad you singled that part out. As it happens, Saurons tend to talk that way (it’s surprising they can speak English at all), and Isaura is a mathematician. Apart from that, I was in a park when a gust of wind tore through the trees and a flock of noisy corellas flew over, something about the harmony of the sounds together… Thanks, BG.
Surreal.
I should have put that in the tags. 🙂 Started out just an ordinary trip to an ordinary planet but something happened. 🚀 I find surreality is a feeling you can have right here on earth. Things can be quite normal, a logical process of cause and effect, and there you are. Possibly it happens to me more often that it should. 😜
You definitely need to send out the ‘surreal’ signal, Steve. Very unfair of you to post without it! It definitely happens to you more than it should, but I can recommend a therapy – medicare approved … no, it’s ok, I’m just on the booze again!
I’ll be better in the morning.
Hahaha, I was thinking “latest news” might be a good tag. I’m glad you agree. To suffer properly in life, it’s absolutely vital to spend time worrying about trivial details. 😜
I still have a little wine in the bottle, I was planning to save it for a special occasion, ie, Monday, but if there’s a way to get Medicare to pay for it as “therapy”, I’m in. 😸
What a fruitful imagination you have Steve!
As I struggle with my nose on my canvas I can’t see or feel a thing. I am a vessel near empty. Thank god you write for you have topped my glass today 🙂 whewwww
Thanks, I’m glad you found something in this piece. I hope you are okay and can pursue your wonderful art. ❤️ I’m thinking of you.
Intriguing and beautiful! Love the opening too. And the dishwasher line 🙂
I really like the art as well, Steve
Thanks Vanessa. I started with the opening, no idea where the poor wretch would wind up, but outer space provides plenty of opportunities. One of my favourite domestic appliances: you can cook a chicken in a dishwasher (not that I have).
Still working on art programming and hoping it’s improving. Maybe the computer is doing better since I gave her a name (last week’s comments): Florence. Mind you, she’s insisting on coffee breaks and paid annual leave. 💻
haha as she should 🙂
Truly, each of your pieces is a novel unto itself. And as I struggle with my attention span, I think what you do is rather perfect, actually.
Thank you for that. I aim for ‘good enough’ but you know, if I’m overshooting, that’s great. 😸 I struggle with pace and length in straight fiction; with poe, my random belief that some ambiguity is ok to leave in helps.
haha definitely ‘good enough’!
And yes, agreed. Oh yes, very random lol.
Ah, the visuals (words as well as art) are, as always, stunning…
Sorry, in time delay mode this week, especially since it’s almost next week. Glad you were stunned (in a good way).
I used to think I was pretty much all “left brain”: well organised, maths, computer coding and so on. 🤖 It started to change when I developed visual signatures for interpreting electrical data, and after that with the visual evolution code I’m working on now. Although I can’t say which is chicken and which is egg, I suspect that all the visuals I see the code produce as it runs affect my imagination.
Shades of tasers! “Awesome” is overused anymore so I’ve moved on to “stunning” 😀 I think we just tamp down our right brain when we’re out working, building a career, etc., but somehow the little bugger makes itself known…