Wreck

Starspace.
The old ship drifts in silence,
untended,
hull riddled with meteor holes.

Corpseship,
hung amidst the hiss of hydrogen.
Freighter.
Oh, we carted our dreams amidst the
stars.
We, as children, imagined ourselves
piloting
such great ships as once this was.

Deathcraft.
In those times before love we had
dreamed
of adventures in the emptiness, our
lasers
blazing, our muscles straining, war.

Floating.
Once, this thing was a powerful
beast
that shredded space and time,
warping
its way from port to bustling port.

Starvessel.
Its captain, perhaps, was a hard
being
with a taste for the exotic, who
craved
strange women, slavegirls, worlds.

Wreck.
Out here in the hydrogen-murmuring
emptiness
the hulk floats, its Captain long
atomised,
his dreams long faded, entropic.

Cargostar.
Oh, and once, we too had our dreams,
childlike
and innocent, now barely recalled,
hardly
considered, for what we have outgrown.

Steven E. McDonald, poet, novelist, screenwriter, composer, madman. Latest novel: WAYSTATION from Tor, currently in preproduction for a poetry CD for the Slightly Off: Open Field Forum group.

Read more by Steven E. McDonald

Comment on this story in the Aphelion Forum

Return to Aphelion's Index page.