Rocket hulks in neighbor's yards,
engulfed in meteor weeds,
crawling through space,
dissolving in their own stillness.
Eyesore robots cool their circuits
in heaps of outmoded technology,
reminders of some twenty third century
fall of Rome, the bankruptcy of
Kapek Cybemautics.
Abandoned towers half-buried
by red sand, windows blind,
doorways mute, antennae deaf,
civilization's bones picked clean
by stalking bloodless winds.
And cold, bitter cold, on some
worlds, an end in itself,
as if two-hundred below emptiness
is really a race of people wanting
nothing to do with any of us,
cracking our thermometers like schoolyard bullies
smashing the glasses of the goofy kid.
Bodies stranded way out beyond
the space lanes of the republic,
vehicles fossilized in mud,
unclaimed souvenirs of
The Great Crash, The Even Greater Collapse,
stacks of papers hailing failed theories,
no longer read writings of predictors of the
universe's end, statues to gods
who saved bottle tops in lieu of souls...
it's all a great garbage dump,
with explorers for bums
and pickings so few...
space junk crashes down in my back yard,
almost decapitates the dog...
he barks like crazy
but he thinks like me
JOHN GREY; Australian born poet, playwright, musician. Latest book is "What Else Is There" from Main Street Rag. Recently in Hubbub, South Carolina Review and The Journal Of The American Medical Association.
© John Grey
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