PostPoems Be Artistic. Be Creative. Be Inspired!

[In memory of two juniors, senior Poets of

science fiction; unfortunately suicided:

James Tiptree, Jr., and Walter Miller, Jr.]

The lovers had anticipated this
night a long time---because the Sparkling Rings
(remnants of an ancient catastrophe)
will soon ascend into the sky above
the windowed house in which the lovers dwell
on a high peak, commanding in broad view
the mining valley.  On that vast rock slab,
ten thousand autobots search for, gather,
and process certain mineral extracts
for export on the autoplioted
transports.  The lovers are wholly alone.
They have not been here a full season yet,
arriving here before the rings' return
to this position.  Not quite a full year
has passed since they both graduated as
seniors fresh from the Pluralversity
where, coupled, they majored in poetry---
harrased, from time to time, by bullies' wrath.
Most bullies are Originated,  thus
human without genetic flaws enfleshed.
Most of their victims, like our lovers, are
mutants---called Alterednated---some of whom
(just like these lovers) are more beautiful
than most Originated tolerate.
Consider these two lovers before you:
a boy, a girl, each twenty-two years old;
each with an average height and slender build.
Their skin color is delicate sapphire.
Their hair, which both wear almost at waist length,
is crimson.  The young man might be supposed---
at passing glance---to seem a little bit
too feminine (but whatever you think,
that aspect pleases his companion).  This
whole planet guarantees their privacy;
and few, if any , want this sort of work---
to manage the mining machinery,
which takes less effort, these days, than you might
imagine.  But these two, contrary to
what their respective parents hoped for them,
sought this work as rare opportunity;
choosing, in love, each other's company
to any others'.  Love made, poetry,
and constellated night skies are delights
sufficient to sustain them a long time.
Look at them:  clad in baggy lounging pants
and fawn-gray socks (green seams across the toes);
bare from the waist up, and no one to object  

(These, and almost all their clothes come from 

a planet quite far from here, called Septuagesimus,

where such fashios are preserved.)  Both unshod

(as they have been mostly accustomed to

since their days in college marked thus

as fashion rejecters, unreliable

in all aspects just because of that one;

but, a word to haters, here are the hated,

two whom you had doubted, slandered, and shunned)
snuggled like playful kittens on the couch,
they wait with great excitement to observe
the Sparkling Rings' appearace in the sky
of Mars.  A most dramatic sight they are:
sparkling and nebulous, in shimmering
movement, streaked through with a variety
of colors always changing, never still.

The rings are all that now remains
of legendary Earth and its sole moon:
this solar system's worst catastrophe,
fifteen millenia ago, some said;
prediction of which (many scholars held)
sent frightened mankind quickly into space.