HARVEST
To the reaper
single-minded
and dispassionate as it is
there are no victims or fallen heroes
or enemy combatants
or collateral damage
only a rich harvest of biomass
waiting to be collected
an abundant bounty
of serendipitous
fallen fruit.
THE LOST MAN
Stranded in an expanding exploding corrosive
universe of attractions, conflicting forces,
pulsars pulsing and quasars quasing, cosmic rays
on the hunt for something to fry to the far side
of extra-crispy, dark energy straining, dark matter
throwing its weight around, black holes wondering why
they can’t just be dark like everything else –
ice-cold and loaded down with the sorrows of a billion
stillborn galaxies, the Wanderer, the Lost Man strides
from one shifting constellation to the next,
watches time and space fold themselves back
before him like heavy oil flowing down a bottomless
drain, like the dream you dream every night
and desperately try and inevitably fail to hold onto
as you drift up out of a deep exhausting sleep.
OBJECT OF DESIRE
Occasionally I ask myself what it is
that draws them to me.
I study my reflection – broad, gently
curved shoulder elements;
gleaming pelvic ridges, razor thin,
streamlined; telescoping
tubular shanks, fully extended;
imposing steel-and-ceramic codpiece.
The face – its absolute lack
of expression, I’ve been assured, allows
the beholder to assign to it any
of a vast array of human emotions.
An onboard systems display with its
mildly hypnotic battery of data readouts.
Every component an unequivocal
statement of functionality.
Am I objectively beautiful,
mysterious, masculine, seductive?
Hampered by built-in self-judgment
inhibitors – useful as they are in
the field – I am ultimately forced
to leave these questions unanswered.
So I continue to accept their
admiration and adulation – to me less
than nothing, but they seem to find it
strangely comforting.
To the reaper
single-minded
and dispassionate as it is
there are no victims or fallen heroes
or enemy combatants
or collateral damage
only a rich harvest of biomass
waiting to be collected
an abundant bounty
of serendipitous
fallen fruit.
THE LOST MAN
Stranded in an expanding exploding corrosive
universe of attractions, conflicting forces,
pulsars pulsing and quasars quasing, cosmic rays
on the hunt for something to fry to the far side
of extra-crispy, dark energy straining, dark matter
throwing its weight around, black holes wondering why
they can’t just be dark like everything else –
ice-cold and loaded down with the sorrows of a billion
stillborn galaxies, the Wanderer, the Lost Man strides
from one shifting constellation to the next,
watches time and space fold themselves back
before him like heavy oil flowing down a bottomless
drain, like the dream you dream every night
and desperately try and inevitably fail to hold onto
as you drift up out of a deep exhausting sleep.
OBJECT OF DESIRE
Occasionally I ask myself what it is
that draws them to me.
I study my reflection – broad, gently
curved shoulder elements;
gleaming pelvic ridges, razor thin,
streamlined; telescoping
tubular shanks, fully extended;
imposing steel-and-ceramic codpiece.
The face – its absolute lack
of expression, I’ve been assured, allows
the beholder to assign to it any
of a vast array of human emotions.
An onboard systems display with its
mildly hypnotic battery of data readouts.
Every component an unequivocal
statement of functionality.
Am I objectively beautiful,
mysterious, masculine, seductive?
Hampered by built-in self-judgment
inhibitors – useful as they are in
the field – I am ultimately forced
to leave these questions unanswered.
So I continue to accept their
admiration and adulation – to me less
than nothing, but they seem to find it
strangely comforting.
Bio: Jeffrey Park lives, works and writes in Munich, Germany. His work
has appeared most recently in The Speculative Edge, Eye to the Telescope
and the Science Fiction Poetry Association's anthology Dwarf Stars
2013. Links to all of his published work can be found at www.scribbles-and-dribbles.com
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