Ode to His Bastards: The Accomplice Falls in Love

Part 2 of "Bastards: The Terror Science Creates" (click here to view part 1, "What Worlds We Create").

But first, Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (to set the mood):

"For this I had deprived myself of rest and health. i had desired it with an ardour that far exceeded moderation; but now that I had finished, the beauty of the dream vanished, and breathless horror and disgust filled my heart."

Ode to His Bastards

I wait for you to hatch

to crawl out from ground,

sprouting, unfurling,

a city populated by umbrellas.

I wait for you and pray:

grow, darlings

you are mother father

brother sister

both one and many,

divide and multiply.

You are no flower patch

no garden herb, but still

so tender, so easily bruised.

I worry about you

your soft purple blood

what may happen in the moments

you must spend alone.

Your Doctor,

so mad for pleasure,

will sow and sell your parts

pluck

clean and dry

body to cap.

You will be eaten

and shake the trees,

put breath into walls.

You will be eaten

and like a tapeworm

grow fast and greedy.

It is only after being consumed

that you bare your teeth.

The next installment!

I'm posting my Sunday poem a little early this week. It's the next part of a sequence I'm working on with rbannal at permanentstrangerladyhand.

Just in case you missed something...

part 1: "Love Song for the End of Summer" (rbannal)

part 2: "Morning in Late September" (fragondruit)

part 3: "A New Sunset" (rbannal)

This week I was to "steal" two of his lines from part 3 and use them in order, but with the freedom to play with the line breaks. As always, I italicized rbannal's lines. Watch his poetry blog for part 5-- he'll have to siphon two lines from my poem and weave it into his own response.

Here's part 4:

Crash on M-131

The engine hisses as rain hits the hot steel.

I walk along the side of the road until my limbs go numb;

until the trees and farmhouses on the horizon blur and

the moon fades to gray. Until once-closed eyes again

acknowledge the perfection of the spiraling colors.

I keep walking because it is too late to go back.

I leave my vocal chords along the

side of the road. I am naked.

The wind must have ripped the clothes

from my body. How is it, I wonder, that

I did not notice when this happened?

I must be breathing.

I pass a hulk of charred metal and plastic.

With each step the circle tightens.

I’ve been here before.

A familiar smell mingles with that of

smoldering leather and upholstery.

Smoke doesn’t just rise, it spreads.

For a moment, I can almost

hear myself whisper, but it’s too quiet.

Why do I know that awful smell?

Then I remember.

The engine hisses as rain hits the hot steel.

BASTARDS

I'm finally going to take the plunge and attempt to revise the massive sequence of poems titled "Bastards: The Terror Science Creates." It is my attempt at bringing science fiction into my poetry.

What Worlds We Create

I. THE ACCOMPLICE

I was his friend,

assistant,

confidante,

but most of all,

his accomplice.

I saw his Bastards for the

monsters they were,

the Doctor

for the monster

he had become.

There were no parlor tricks,

no circus mirrors--

only the twisted faces

born from the desires

of a madman

with time on his hands.

(There is nothing more dangerous

than a madman with time on his hands.)

And yet,

I too am mad, as mad as he.

I watched, I watched

and did nothing.

II. THE BASTARDS

Call us Bastards,

the dark corners of the mind

kept tucked away, quiet

materialized in fangs and glory.

We nibbling away at our creator’s

fingertips, toenails and sanity

squealing naked through nightmares

and spitting into the ears of young

make starving and sleepless

sift time through smell

and eclipse the night.

Some will pray for death.

Others know it has already come.

III. THE DOCTOR

Create and godless be.

Clarification

The post from 9/18/11 was NOT meant to be dirty. I gave it a nice, literal title to tie up the metaphor in a neat little bow and to put those filthy minds to rest (though I admit, I should have known better when I titled the poem, "I can almost taste it.").

Anyway, it's now "freedom rings," check it out and see if it strikes you in a different way.

I guess it would have been bolder to roll with the evocative message, but I'm not feeling too brash this evening.

An Experiment in Collaboration

First of all, I missed a week. Shame on me. So this is either last Sunday's post six days late, or this Sunday's post one day early. We'll see how tomorrow plays out.

This post is the initial step towards a collaborative poem between Rbannal and myself. It's an exercise in cops and robbers. Mostly robbers. I've stolen a line Rbannal's "love song for the end of summer" and inserted it into my own poem. Presumably, he will then follow this by stealing (a different) line from my poem. I'll then snag a couplet from that poem, and so on and so forth until the poems progressively more intertwined. The end result should be an nifty sequence, beginning with "love song for the end of summer" and ending god knows where.

Find poem #1 in the sequence at: permanentstrangerladyhand.blogspot.com.

Here's my "reply," or poem #2 in the sequence. Rbannal's line is italicized.

Morning in Late September

Driving East on Huron,

I catch the end of the sunrise

orange, gold rays linger

just minutes as the sun drifts

deep into the overcast sky.

It won’t be long now

before I’ll only see

the tender halo of light

creeping along the horizon,

breaking the dawn.

Gray hours claim more

of each successive morning

as the Earth shifts.

The city shrugs uncomfortably

close to winter.

In a month, the morning commute

will be in total darkness.

A chill will sink into my chest

and stay there, not breaking free

until next spring.

Frost will line the inside

of my bedroom window.

It will be next to impossible

to ignore my toes. Even so,

summer’s death is a welcome one.

For a moment, the trees

blush yellows, reds, purples

until, realizing themselves,

the color drains from their branches,

the leaves fall

brown, crumble,

decay

feed the soil

and nourish the roots

from which they rose.

Morning dew shimmers

at the brink of frost,

caught between water

and ice.

The air clears,

no longer burdened with

heavy swarms of mosquitoes,

flies, gnats, and the sticky

sweat of humidity.

Gusts of wind move freely

dancing along each nerve

on my face and fingertips,

sharing a hushed warning—

soon.