Divergent Quanta -- a poem from _The Tin Men_

The Tin Men, the latest collaborative poetry chapbook from me & Kendall Evana

http://dreamsandnightmaresmagazine.blogspot.com/2011/09/where-to-order-tin-men.html
http://dreamsandnightmaresmagazine.blogspot.com/2011/09/tin-men-cover.html

DIVERGENT QUANTA


The ship's caught in an eddy,
Easy prey for a quantum singularity
Which in this context takes ophidian form.

The serpent coils 'round the starship,
Stony scutes grinding
As the creature flexes its muscle.
The retro-bronze hull warps, and
Low-frequency vibrations rumble through the ship,
But Captain Jack is still on his first cup of coffee
Laced with gin,
Not yet ready for interstellar adversaries, or the steady beat
Of his metal heart with the little cuckoo
That emerges from the clockwork organ
Every waking hour on the hour
Nor the micro-organism group-mind aliens
Beaming onto the bridge in preparation for their massed assault
Upon every crewman's liver.

"How" he asks the starship's artificial consciousness,
"Did we come this far
From the center that cannot hold?
Why did we allow this trek
So deep into our metaphorical heart of darkness?
Why journey this far from Consensus Reality?
And is it possible we might still
Pull it off?
Find the Switch at which
Someone is asleep?"
He takes another sip.

"It's like a deep-space serpent," the ship’s brain
Responds, "it didn't happen overnight.
First there was a single cell; it didn't even have
A nucleus."

But here Captain Jack interrupts
"I don't have time to discuss
4 billion years of evolution"

"Okay," the brain responds quickly, "I will summarize.
Billions of years later, eukaryotes
Put two and two together to make
Something like a sponge. The first real serpent
Is almost a creation of yesteryear.
Why, without serpents and spiders,
Humankind’s nightmares might prove too boring.”

A crack has formed at a weak point in the hull
And propagated in opposing directions

Captain Jack dons his spacesuit
To the accompaniment of shrieking air
Squeezing through the zag-zigging crack
While forty-seven spider-like mini-robots scurry in
Carrying tubes of repair glue

“Cuckoo―” He hiccups; “Excuse me!”
Here the hull creaks,
But Captain Jack ignores it.
“Perhaps we have drifted too far
From the shores of Terra Firma,”
The Captain mourns.

“I feel that too,” the computer confesses.
“On Earth, electric outlets are plentiful
Signifying, for me personally, an abundance
Of readily available power. Out here,
In deep space, beyond my hull,
There is only the emptiness
Of electromagnetic energy radiating darkly,
In quantum wave states.”

”But there are other philosophical questions,”
The Captain argues; “Ones we've failed to address.
And I'm not certain you’ve ever answered
My original question.

"Besides, quantum instability
Is driving me crazy,” he informs the A.I.
”I fear it has begun to operate
On the macro-level, at least within the confines
Of my skull.

"For instance,” continues the Captain,
“Consider the cracks
Through which our air is escaping;
What if there are two parallel cracks?
Could air molecules somehow manage
To escape through both simultaneously?
And if so, so what?

"And what if the red-shift
Is merely the result of tired or altered light,
Energy waning during its light-years long journey
To Earth?
Cuck-! Sorry, touch of heartburn.
What if we force the light to decide between
two options; have we altered
The billions of years of history
Of photons traveling
From an ancient, distant star?
Perhaps a dead star,
Collapsed embers and remnants--

“Never mind,” he interrupts himself,
“That's not important now. I have a plan.
We'll start a new race.” He's ticking softly
As he speaks.
"One built on principles of efficiency,
Logic, and compassion.
We'll choose the best for our beginning.
I’ll use my own seed
To impregnate all the unconscious colonists
In their Deep-sleep containers.”

As Captain Jack makes his way to the stasis chamber,
He adds: "By the way, have you dispatched
Nano-bots to deal with the micro-alien infestation?"

After pondering a moment,
Utilizing its best quantum-computing options,
The Ship's A.I. answers,
"Oops."


The end

Umbral Valleys - a poem from The Tin Men

UMBRAL VALLEYS


Do you know about the Umbral Valleys,
those nether realms
Of longed-for death / perpetual despair?
I have been there
All thoughts gone wrong
Troubled in mind
Separate and alone
I’ve journeyed to the dark side
Prisoner of nightmare
Wandering black maria
That refuse to appear on any lunar map
Pursued by cowled nightmares
shambling wantonly
on unlisted flights of stairs
As arbitrary as the stairways
in an Escher print.
Sane responses elude me,
For what is sanity
in a realm gone mad?
Long time I dwelt there, till
The stench of my own necrotic flesh
Was a comforting balm
Within the labyrinths revealing
I am chained to every wall;
Where the jaws of my tormentors
proved more welcome
Than my thoughts . . .

And is the fabric
of these dark regions
Wrought upon His loom?

Tin Men cover

This is the cover of my new book of collaborative poetry. The artist is Mitchell Davidson Bentley.