Wednesday, July 6, 2016

The Heavenly Escapade: Parts I-VI

The Heavenly Escapade: Parts I-VI
Hey, CBC, 'spaceman' is all one word. I can read a dictionary, too! Does any CBC listener recall that host correcting my hyphenation in 2007? But his Saturday Night Live friend who stole my scripts didn't have to worry about my hyphenation because the words were spoken rather than written. These CBC staff frown on my cigarette butt smoking. But the Saturday Night Live cast takes the money they are paid from stealing my poems and apparently smokes so much crack with it that they burn out the centers for moral judgement in their brains. And do you judge hate by appearance or by action? Sharing my songs and telling the truth are acts of love. And stealing my songs and lying are acts of hate. As for my anger, well, I think it should be understandable under these conditions. Gee, maybe I wouldn't have went running to a psychiatrist to complain about how the TV was out to get me if it weren't true. That's a lot of destruction they're allowed to wreak on an independent artist. So much for justice and fair play.

I: The Prospector

The Earth was in an equinox, her crusted pools amassing
To break the ice and flow again upon the hemisphere
But rather than remain at home for one more summer's passing
The scheduled departure for a restless man drew near

The loving two who'd nurtured him and named him Alexander
Had made sure that his education would surpass in scope
A prodigy, he'd been prepared for competitions grander
Than those with which his able peers were disciplined to cope

Excelling in the sciences, at distant suns he'd wonder
And soaked up, most, the knowledge for an interstellar flight
He'd picture how he'd turn the key and feel the engines thunder
As afterburners liberated plumes of yellow light

Humanity had far advanced its certain apprehension
To touch the surfaces once thought beyond the mortal reach
Detecting in the spatial void, a singular dimension
That cut the light-years of the ride to barely moments each

The globe became a speck to him, against a mighty Titan
An isolated outpost of significance too small
From which to look beyond for any measure to enlighten
And whose amenities could only capture and forestall

The boundless possibilities of other shores to land on
Distracted him from noticing the beauty of his home
Restricted by the gravity, a better life, he planned on
Once out into the galaxy and fully free to roam

Scholastic labs afforded him exceptional resources
To see the needed breakthroughs and design the proper ship
He programmed it to keep inside the esoteric courses
To make the most he could of the anticipated trip

A lifetime of engaging in his astronomic passion
Had culminated finally upon the launching pad
A perfect world awaited him to freely form and fashion
Which as a mere terrestrial, he never could have had

II: The Craft

The spaceship Gnostic cleared the clinging canopy of cobalt
And on an intermission, caught the pale unfailing moon
For sentimental looking back, his course would offer no halt
But promised his arrival to the destination soon

He'd poured his utmost into the concern of good propulsion
Installing extra turbines to accelerate his speed
He fed them with a mixture that was processed by emulsion
A few collected particles was all that he would need

Her hull consisted of an alloy recently discovered
By drawing on the minerals of otherworldly mines
Against the jeopardy of space, entirely, it covered
And cut the sleekest path along the slenderest of lines

The cockpit offered cozy seats within a thoughtful layout
Where sensors captured images from odd and even side
And cybernetic games gave an imaginary way out
To he whose passage through the door might strictly be denied

The legend that enticed him to the far-flung planet, Ova
Was of a large community of women fair and tall
Who'd only come to visit when a sudden supernova
Would vaporize their home world and make singles of them all

He figured he'd be better off than with the Terran choices
Who always sought to alter him in inconvenient ways
Intoning their admonishment in thin, unsparing voices
Until his plain environment became a hopeless maze

The Ovans had no other man to use for their example
Of how he might improve himself or know where he fell shy
His average virility should still prove more than ample
To dominate them utterly without the need to try

The ship's computer told him to prepare for hyper travel
He buckled in and waited for the customary burst
A modicum of mystery remained, yet, to unravel
But he would have to get there and attempt his project first

III: The Women

As fits the cosmic scheme of things, millennia transpired
Since women had arrived to make their novel new abode
By visions of Utopia, the builders were inspired
Towards a brave but soft new world, they passionately strode

A founding myth was fashioned to extol their halved condition
So that descendants would not pine to have the former whole
And with the independent means to render parturition
Successors were restricted to the rightful gender, sole

While many of them might have liked to have two parents better
Their caste of ruling priestesses, to power, tightly clung
To save them from an outcome where domestic chores would fetter
As by unjust supremacy, their highest fell a rung

The priestesses could read the stars and someone was expected
To come down from the heavens soon, in answer to their need
Since implantation to conceive was, by a host, rejected
Which called for a replenishment of healthy human seed

A lookout saw the Gnostic make an unobtrusive landing
Outside a population centre, on a vacant lot
And once she saw the pilot on the Ovan soil, standing
Sent word to her superior to come straight to the spot

His eyes received a thrill upon his incidental gander
At well constructed women in an exercise routine
Who stopped what they were doing when they noticed Alexander
Because he was the only man that they had ever seen

They came up close to stare at him and touch his chin unshaven
And keen was he to touch them back, but from it, was deterred
When interrupted by the one whose face, by years, was graven
And taken to confinement without so much as a word

The Amazons were tough enough to tie him at a table
As he beheld them silently and showed his broken heart
They'd banish him to whence he came, as soon as he was able
Retaining of his person, merely one productive part

IV: The Refugee

Securely bound, the hapless man was, by one sentry guarded
But she released him just as soon as they were both alone
Along a private corridor, they stealthily departed
To find the site where he'd made his disruptive presence known

The Gnostic beckoned warmly with electric doors outstretching
His friend insisting she stay with him all the way inside
But though delighted to appeal to one so kind and fetching
He'd strictly planned his voyage as a solitary ride

The posse made his mind up for him, closing in behind her
He realized that she would have no other place to turn
Of urgent need to flee the scene, they needed no reminder
As gas ignited in a blaze to, back to space, return

She said Aurora was her name and that she long had waited
For anyone to rescue her from rulers so corrupt
But Alexander, on the navigation, concentrated
To modify their flight path with a bend, steep and abrupt

She told him how she broke the rules to learn his strange expression
And how a ban on imports kept her education dim
As he was busy tending to the cabin's air compression
And technical complexities were what distracted him

She let him know the plan for him and of her opposition
In their dependence on a foe, she'd sensed a thread amiss
The jarring news succeed to take his mind off the mission
And silence her pronouncements with a long and grateful kiss

The intimate encounter would the primal urge awaken
With caution, on the starter's part, incumbent for the while
As dissolute and insincere, he feared he'd be mistaken
If he proceeded to a soul so innocent defile

He let her go and went back to the mundane task of flying
As she allowed her new sensations presently to fade
He'd found for them another prospect fit at least for trying
A planet where the men and women equally were weighed

V: The Musicians

Impelling Alexander to more isolated reaches
Though on the gender issue, he'd been sharply proven wrong
Was Earth's profound cacophony of tools, machines, and speeches
But worse for him turned out to be Aurora with a song

She penetrated to his spine with notes askew and jumbled
Her offbeat trilling blinded him with welling tears of pain
To find his sidearm in a vault, he feverishly fumbled
And told her he would kill her if she ever sang again

With sanctuary from the din, their bearings were in chorus
Where laws assured the harmony of all entangled sound
He slowed at the appearance of the planet called Sonorus
To bring his awesome vessel landing softly on the ground

A welcoming committee was dispatched at once to greet them
And give them special footwear that would cushion how they stepped
The king had seen their spectacle and eagerly would meet them
For far too long his area had in seclusion kept

Sonorus offered symphonies from every direction
The wind was like an oboe on an odyssey sublime
The rushes oscillated with an angel harp's inflection
And mass communications stayed in perfect pitch and time

The visitors were brought to hear the ruler's condemnation
In perfect verses, rolling from his rich, melodic throat
Apparently their noisy ship had made a violation
For which eternal silence must become their final note

Once Alexander gathered how the sentence would be rendered
His future running out against a hard collapsing ring
To desperate requirement, he readily surrendered
And urged his mute associate to go ahead and sing

The notes that had them crying out for mercy were Aurora's
To clear a way back to the ship, her music was enough
He told her she was free to sing, once light-years from Sonorus
As long as he had something for his ears that he could stuff

VI: The Cosmic Rapids

Although the voyage seemed to have been, thus far, disappointing
The stubborn spaceman still chased his celestial Shangri-la
He brought about the tight nose of his craft to get it pointing
To one last possibility of triumph that he saw

The thing that bothered him the very most about Earth Living
Was how no matter seemed to count outside the shallow self
As if contempt for neighbours were the only thing worth giving
And tyranny the one productive purpose for great wealth

He'd learned that an oasis of philanthropy was hidden
Beyond the cosmic rapids on the region's outer belt
To travel to its whereabouts was stringently forbidden
Because of unpredictable effects that would be felt

But he'd anticipated, fully, just such an obstruction
And made his spaceship fit to stand the stress of a black hole
With calculated odds against her fiery destruction
The Gnostic gathered up her force and jumped towards the goal

He took Aurora by the hand and waited for a flurry
The elements all marshaling to thwart the infidel
But what would overtake them would be less a source of worry
Than deeply to befuddle them and hold them in a spell

A dazzling kaleidoscope consumed their field of vision
It swept them up and spun them in a whirlwind slow and strange
From time to space, there grew a bright and psychedelic fission
To planes of vast infinity, they watched their borders change

They gave in to the tantric force by which they levitated
And let their feelings out in fitful tremors of delight
As one coherent soul, was their connection consummated
The fires in them rising to the climax of their flight

They cleared the hurdle with a jolt and in a heap descended
Their heads a little dizzy from the overwhelming spin
Along his predetermined line, they resolutely wended
Relieved of both the pressure from without and from within

(to be continued)
  
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© 2007, 2016. Verses by David Skerkowski. All rights reserved.

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