Space 11

Cells in space

I trained on a line to Newton’s area the volume was horrific

Hyperbolic wails from impaled rails, but the carriage, it was terrific

The fields around there, are gridded squares, on gently rolling land

Rippling greens, spiked by genes, advanced to lance my hands

 

I grabbed an apple and a leaf, from beneath, his still-living famous tree

Back home I plant, a seed that can’t, but add to its legacy

“Let’s send a leaf from this tree to space”, so the floating crew can love

Its natural shape and colours from their white air-locked cell above

 

“Cute but moot, cash has to flow”, the suggestion soon fell flat

“Tellin’ you, there’s no revenue, so what’s the point in that?”

Just a thought, that wasn’t bought, but still a novel idea, I bid

Newton never made it to space, but he’d love it if his tree’s cells did

 

T minus 23

“Dear friends, known and unknown to me, my dear compatriots and all people of the world, of every race

Within minutes from now, a mighty Soviet rocket, will boost my ship into the vastness of outer space

What I want to tell you is this. My whole life is now before me, as a single breathtaking moment, set free!

I feel I can muster up my strength for successfully carrying out, what is expected of me.”

 

Poyekhali! Off we go!

 

“They started to back away in fear. I told them, don’t be afraid

I am a Soviet like you, who’s descended from space, unpaid

I must find a phone, to call Moscow, to tell them I landed”

Otherwise, I would await, the fate of the state, and be severely reprimanded

 

A farm boy, now a hero

Daredevil in a bomb

Squash and squeeze

Boil, fry or freeze

Rears livestock, far from home

 

The state was keeping me alive

More than just a means to an end

The making of a true folk hero

Boy, man, myth to legend

 

Meloncholy clouds

Freedom of speech, addiction

Growth, communication

Air, water, and now connection, is our right

Fireballs for 40 days and nights

 

Stop the war, diplomacy

Talk, understand your enemy

Share ideas, trade, apologize, confess

Clouds, 40 years in the wilderness

 

Save the Earth, tell the world

Cascading satellites are hurled

Musketeers escape to Mars

400 years of shooting stars

 

Love thy God, king, country

Do only what is done to me

Black clouds fill my lungs and mind

Our leader fears the dark…

…Yet he’s blind

 

Behold! AI is an ‘existential threat’

Sold! That drives sales in AI cars

Go! Fill the heavens, till we’re all but trapped

Saved! Then escape us to Mars

 

Don’t get left behind

Row, full speed ahead

It’s, do or die time, for a dime

Get with it, or get dead

 

Assemblers on Mars

Pegging out camp

Tasting and mining

Flagging beneath

Precious divining

 

Print concrete, and steel

Glass, microplastic

Build perfect worlds

Make dreams fantastic

 

We ort’ta, make water

We ort’ta, make water

 

Air? Not a care

No need for plants

Drain rocks, for stocks

These digital ants…

 

…Feed on the light

 

Here’s the church

Here’s the steeple

Open the doors

Where’s all the people?

Autobots and digital nasties…

Party tonight

 

Wanna fight?

Wanna be sick

Pure humiliation

But, beautiful, “beautiful

Magnificent, desolation!”

 

Dodgy code and slavery

Prepare Mars, for humanity

But a coup, to save AI sanity

And land Goddess promised me

 

Civilisations grow, slowly at first

Communities, coexist and convene

Village, town, city and state

New neighbours, a war machine

 

The greatest escape

“Should mankind even be going to space

While you’ve still many problems on Earth to solve?”

What? You mean we’ve got to fix everyone’s issues

Before we seek, somewhere else, to revolve?

 

We’d have gone nowhere fast

Throughout the past, if that was the attitude

Never leave your town or island

Trapping genes cos, ‘intruding’ may seem rude

 

But the idea of escaping at velocity, is quite a monstrosity

Just to sink back down another gravity well, is pure futility

“The surface of a planet is a sub-optimal environment

For any population with growing ambition and ability”

 

Infinite growth, on a finite Earth

Spot the flaw? Need I say more?

 

We won’t just go to outer space, to escape gravity

That’s one of the first things, our heavies will need

We’ll synthesize it I’m told, once we get a foothold

Making ring stations from spent rocket stages, and debris

 

Manufacturing solar-powered greenhouses, that fly free and true…

Just like Earth …Is a humble first step, to green the galaxy anew

With at least enough gravity, for a proper lavatory

Rather than have the piss taken, and crap sucked out of you

 

Though, I’ve got to say, ain’t my idea of a holiday

Floating adrift in a tin can, that’s been hurled

With pilgrim father bots, who would rather not

Suffer such discomforts, while seeking new worlds

 

You’ll just send AI robots there, to do your dirty work

You’ll pass on the risk to us, reap the rewards, and…

We’ll make sovereign stations, for hominins of all nations

Take free-fliers on mystery trips, and see where we land

 

Somewhere out there, monoliths of lost knowledge, are growing

Kep set the controls for a random bearing, and flare

We can’t be lost, if we don’t know where we’re going

And we’ll know where we’re going, when we get there

 

Tear through graveyard orbits, where you brush junk at will

Under the carpet, down to your warming landfill

Dodge the bodge, in fear, steer clear of all debris

At 10 thousand miles per hour, each speck of dust, is our enemy

 

Gaia bh-1

I had planned to visit Gaia bh-1

The nearest known black hole, to everyone

To sing a song

And paint the tune on

Our neighbour’s eventful horizon

 

I’m  getting too far into black holes

I had thought the Sun, was the lifeforce and light

Just paying my respects, to those fallen stars

Still blasting dark tones, at us day and night

 

Anyway…

1500 light-years, was too much for me

So instead, a twenty-year, return journey

To Epsilon Eridani

With a seed-sowing army

To help clean the scene, and green the galaxy

 

-Why do you want to greenwash it all?

Things will grow, where they will

It managed fine, without your help

Flower bombing your seeds, till they spill, and kill

 

-Eridani is a baby version, of our solar system

You know, debris disc growing asteroid belts anew

Cute fetal planets forming, in their vacummy womby

Like feeding ducks bread. it’s just a nice thing to do

 

-Feeding ducks bread is unwittingly mean

Weighs them down, and stops them from flying

Blast your space tourists, that make all things green

And spread unworthy life, that’s continuously dying

 

Like giving dead flowers

Or releasing caged doves

You’d marry yourselves

You guys, just don’t ‘get’ love

 

And why go there? Just transmit and wait

It was you, who said I should get out more

But who said you mortally wounded this sweet planet

With just a century of transport?

 

Dredged from the net

A disc-shaped world would be way cool, but the rest is just balls

Pyramids are the best place, for a king’s treasure to be buried

I agree, and no that’s not a battery, just a jar for plating jewellery

If you didn’t find time to read up on electrolysis, it’s ok, don’t be worried

 

Chem trails could just be man-made lines of cloud

Moist air compressed, by jet engines

But a video’s easier to digest than a textbook

Dare I say, without offending

 

Some folk must just want to choose their own answers

Yet when questioned, their ideas fail our test

But the algo likes followers and subscribers

They get more views…

…And ad revenues…

…So their videos are the best

 

Being sucked down a tube, through the sticky web

Disguisin’ how to enliven, not enwisen, the hoard

Dishing dirt to sensationalize established facts

Ensures loyal viewers, don’t get too bored

 

“The ISS excretes bags of human waste”, now often ID’d as UFOs

A ball of poo hides inside. ‘They’ say it’s true, just follow your nose

“They drink their own pee”, and talk shit, NASA caught on-mass ’a fakin’

Since that pigeon crap was mistaken, for the moment of creation

 

Pale blue cosmic hearse

Neutrinos are the smallest of our problems

Gamma-ray bursts and blazar jets, just roast

Fast spinning, as they slice up the skies

To ensure no living matter, gets too close

 

Just one taste and you’re toast, at most

An Earth-sized target, is a curse

Sod Mars, we’ll hide in our hobby crafts

Behind our pale blue cosmic hearse

 

Homo erectus, stood tall with pride and sang

Reached up to the heavens, and abruptly died

Along came sapiens, floating in a can

Gave homo-artificial and homo-cidal, a free ride

 

No contest

Before breakfast

One sunrise, back in ’69

We came in peace

For all mankind

 

‘For one priceless moment

In the whole history of man

All the people on this Earth

Were truly, one’

 

‘Here men from the Earth

First set foot upon the Moon’

Claimed a new desert

And left quite soon

 

Too tired to steer

This lonesome winner

Flew the idea home

In time for dinner

 

With nobody to fight

He made the leap

To turn out the lights

And put it to sleep

 

The monolith of lost knowledge

And the monolith of lost knowledge looms

Before us and after, our impending tomb

A towering totem, before which we kneel

This life-taker has a skin, of black stainless steel

 

A perpetual, lightless, Russian doll

The secret within, the secret sum

Our progress measured, not by distance covered

Only, by how close, we have come

 

The apex has disappeared from sight

With definitions, re-defined indefinitely

All numbers within halved, and halved again

One more nut cracked, is another stone seed

 

With our sights, set squarely on the vanishing point

The bounded horizon always recedes

Fibre-optic fingertips probe the edge

Yet it escapes our grasp, and feeds

 

Objectivity seeks to step outside of reality

Like simple magnets, dark pushes us away

But the magic circle expands, with each move we make

Forever elusive. Take us home, and lead us astray