Five short poems with a science fiction theme.
*
Hot ship barrelling through empty space
Bright star ahead
Fiery tail of gamma heat
Leaving a ghostly trace
Blue green shimmering paradise found
Spied from afar
Ninety nine point nine
Analyses sound
Cold bodies slumbering, densely packed
Lives on hold
No dreams; no hope
Sorted and stacked
Mad old lingering aliens hide
Ancient ruins above
Shell of a once-great civilisation
Malevolence inside
*
man adrift in space
dark white in infinite black
lightyears still to go
*
ancient hunger in arid soil concealed
colonists unaware
dreaming in their habitats
machinery polluting the basin dust
with chemicals and life
the breath of God
resurrection
forgotten seeds in water born
rupturing with joyous life
bursting forth with tendrils green
coiling and curling, hunting, hunting
seeking, searching, salivating
drunk on foreign food
sick with strange microbial wine
thick vine penetrating human homes
wrapping tight round fragile bones
digging deep in fertile flesh
its roots a suffocating mesh
infusing, consuming
adapting, adopting
merging
verging on human
but ancient and superior
*
ancient Charybdis
its black belly stuffed with stars
we circle our doom
*
skin eroded by interstellar dust
eaten away by cosmic particles
bitten by marauding meteors
diseased with a rotting nuclear core
infested with nanites running riot
millions of years of replication errors
of electro-evolution
of magnetic revolution
a carcass adrift – dead, decayed
full of new life
the warship reborn a plague ship
Francis James Franklin (Alina Meridon) 