021720d

Closed Loop

The digger fouled up,

That’s the only explanation.

Programmed to expand the colony,

Sent ahead to dig more tunnels,

It took a wrong turn somewhere,

Maybe a bug, or a virus

Scrambling the programming,

Whatever the cause,

We woke to find ourselves living in a Klein bottle,

Every tunnel simply leads to another,

None will take us out.

The outside world:

Mars City, Mars itself, yada yada,

Might as well have been destroyed,

Maybe it was,

And maybe this was deliberate,

Maybe somebody in here

Really pissed off somebody important,

Out there.

Meanwhile, Betsy wants to see her mom,

Working topside when it happened,

Grandma and grandpa,

sunsets.

I miss them too,

And I’m knocking on the walls.

Is anybody listening?

111613

Case Study


I like this best, the wild-eyed scientist said,
swirling high a fine klein bottle,
holding it up to the fluorescent night
my love is chronicling life
among the bottle born & bred
inside's a world I've made
he smiled and set the bottle down.

How does your love escape the bottleverse,
I asked, when's project's run its course,
and every datum well in hand?
why, he does not, came the urbane reply,
addressed to my lips and lower,
not to my eyes; I smiled,
and we commenced to dance.

Scientific ardor flamed amid the racks
and bottles, encircled by melange of sparking physic-do,
we kissed, I slipped inside's boundaries,
and signed my mark on table, floor, and wall,
on skin, on heart, on scientific soul as well,
for thus our months together well did prove.

But of late a pall has fallen on our lovers' nest,
my companion's hard awork, not spending nights with me,
so I've precautioned for myself a twisted bottle,
with an extra dimension, or two; or three;
if my lover pops one on me in my throes,
I'll inside-out it with my own,
for I don't believe that any bottle,
could be world enough to satisfy the likes of me.


end