Poetry

by BG Dodson

Quantum Night

Beyond the galaxy's outer rim
Where comets crawl off to die,
Long abandoned planets wobble
Faint fading star fire fills the sky.

We shriek in silent running
At twice the speed of light.
Yesterday is now tomorrow
And tomorrow is out of sight.

And still the ion engines burn;
Flaring brightly into space,
Battering 'gainst continuum walls
Until we vanish without a trace.

Tumbling down into N-Space
Within a magnetically fielded cage.
Quavering jump gate portals form
Buffeted by solar winds that rage.

Relativity is an angled perspective
And you haunt my churning mind
As we slide through porous nothing
In a maddening Einsteinian ride.

Cosmic radiation evokes memory,
Stimulating chemical starts;
Short bursts of exquisite nirvana
Opening wormholes to our hearts.

And this is where the ghosts are kept.
Far from harsh, illuminating light.
As we hurtle ever faster, downward,
Into the writhing quantum night.

Shielded lightly from abstract nothing,
The organic cellular cortex bends
And upward bubbles frothing lunacy
Sluicing past to counted sins.

Dancing with the Quantum Devil
On each and every N-Space run,
The brain generates wave particles
As all possible realities are spun.

Dreams multiply existence minutely,
Until a geometrical progression sticks.
Subtle shaping, shifting without warning
As we become the one we pick.

Bit by bit, these dreams are built
From shifting sands of what-if space,
Until at last, as homeward bound
We can no longer chart our place.

Dreamed beyond our existence
Via fluid conduits of yearning,
We have obviated our past lives
Within the wormhole's turning.

And yet, existence survives still
A smile on every crewman's face,
Might this not be the best possible
Universe to exist in our shared space?

Love is a White Hot Star

Lock the bulkhead doors
And fire up the plasma jet.
We're off to find true love
The kind that dreamers sweat.

Somewhere in the universe
Between the boiling stars,
I know she's hiding stealthily
With a thousand souls in jars.

A thousand souls in jars
And not one of them is free.
I'll search until I'm gray and old
Because one of them is me.

Kick in the boosted hyper-drives
And strap tightly in your seat.
We're off to scour the universe
And that's not an easy feat.

We'll chart each scanned planet
On the grid upon the screen,
And then we'll eliminate
All the places we have been.

Robots in love are twitchy
And androids are no better,
I just wish that she would transmit
I always love to get a letter.

Wide space transmission beams
Skewer space from end to end,
And I've always got my radio on
To receive but never send.

Radio silence is the order
And we're hot upon her trail.
We're like the holy knights of yore
Searching for the Holy Grail.

And though we may range far and wide
Across the banded radiation fields,
We'll probably never find her
If she's boosted up her shields.

And so, close up the portholes
And ratchet up the door.
We're firing up the rockets
And we're going to look some more.

We'll scour the far-flung galaxies
Way out beyond Orion's Belt.
And even if we fail this trip,
Her heart, in time, will melt.

For we are the esprit DE corps
Who goes where no man dare.
Even though her eyes are slashing
Our wounds are the badge we wear.

She's the Queen of Stealth.
She's the Queen of Love.
And if we ever find her
The stars will gleam above.

Somewhere in the universe
Between the boiling stars,
I know she's hiding stealthily
With a thousand souls in jars.

A thousand souls in jars
And not one of them is free.
I'll search until I'm gray and old
Because one of them is me.

Author's Comments
An age old Spacer's love song - best sung alone in the asteroid belt with a healthy amount of Mrs. MacGregor's Planet-Buster Gin.

Robotica Love Blues -- in villanelle form

Torque me down baby, drive in the screws;
I'm coming apart at the welded seams.
Rattling with the Robotica Love blues.

I've blown every single safety fuse
While pondering your encoded schemes.
Torque me down baby, drive in the screws.

Calculated probability and analyzed clues,
My inputs blinded by your high beams.
Rattling with the Robotica Love blues.

Tactile data pours in, clogging my digital queues,
I'm governed by limited program regimes.
Torque me down baby, drive in the screws.

CPU overloaded, reactions on "cruise";
My circuits slag with white-hot screams.
Rattling with the Robotica Love blues.

Ones and zeros dance in binaries of twos.
My oil pump - air locked - steams...
Torque me down baby, drive in the screws.
Rattling with the Robotica Love blues.

Bride of Robotica

01101100011011110111011
00110010100100000011011
01011001010010000001110
10001100101011011100110
01000110010101110010

She sexily, swingingly sashayed in
With gear gulping greasy sass;
Stainless steel shining brightly
Accented with burnished brass.

Her brain case is crystal clear,
And those winking LEDs beguile.
Low-cut battle armor shows it all;
Barely shielding her atomic wiles!

Chimerically wound wired circuits
With talents hidden and displayed.
I suspect she's an alien robot,
But, oddly, I'm not dismayed.

011011000110111101110110
011001010010000001101101
011001010010000001110100
011100100111010101100101

I'm just your normal robot guy,
Built of cold corrugated tin and steel.
I had no prior knowledge of emotion
But now I'm learning how to feel.

Is it something in her female form?
Or is it just her wiring schematics?
And why do I feel this odd bestirring
Deep down in my pneumatics?

She's the only female android
To exist within this dimension X.
Now I'm calculating probability
Of we two robots performing sex.

Safely done, of course, I know.
This much is programmed well.
I suppose we should eschew ladders;
I can only imagine if we fell.

011011000110111101110110
011001010010000001101101
011001010010000001100010
011000010110001001111001

I just fear being too mechanical,
I cannot compose my thoughts.
One supposes our creators
Did not consider sex for 'bots.

And then I ponder positions.
I'm not sure what protocol to send.
What if she is more flexible than I,
Might that cause my bits to bend?

But one thing I know for fact,
She is far more advanced than I.
From the way she's sizing me up,
I feel like the square of pi.

011001000110111101101110
001001110111010000100000
011011010110000101101011
011001010010000001101101
011001010010000001100010
011011000111010101100101

So come with me my darling dear,
Let us link our binary source code.
I only fervently hope she is gentle
And that my brain will not explode...
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