Ian Kennedy and Pavle Pavlović

As Sol the Rouge begins to rise,
it warms Eve’s heart, but Downs her eyes.
A dusty halo round the flame
will touch the dunes and dawn proclaim,
as distant dusty storms reflect
on Eve’s dry eye and her deject.
To get up now it is her task –
No more in Sol-light can she bask.

You must recall: it was Eve’s Gran
who went to Mars to start a clan.
From little pool Eve chose her Buzz
and paired with him, who was her cuzz.
Through porthole now Eve sees no wood,
nor earthy ground for motherhood.
With hasty zeal space courier flies;
A sandy landing ’fore her eyes.

So, as the dawn of morn is broke,
our Eve then hops, with grace unspoke,
goes out of base to Lander Stop
to fetch the parcel she does hop.
Her ‘FedEx’ was by Earth prepaid,
and on this day had come her AID,  
by careful voyage, with prosp’rous end,
the ***** arrived that Earth did send!

Low-G and man-made air do need
the seed to make a better breed.
Incestuously is not a scheme:
a gene pool needs a brand new stream.
We want no feeble Mars-strain seed,
So A.I.Dee is for the deed.
From Earth doth come the flow of genes
as bottled stuff – you know the means!

To make the Martians extra strong
The Earth Decreed all inbreeds wrong:
All ***** from Earth-bound men must come.
Through outer space it must have swum!
In DNA do secrets lie,
tho’ some do think that fated sky
will give them scope to freely screen
the final flux of wanted gene.

“I’m not at ease, but lurk and look –
  I peer at pack from Earthly nook.
  Where linger ye, my family lift
  to proffer me some needed gift
  of fruit or nuts and comfort care?
  The time is right to use what’s there?
  No creature comfort do I need.
  My friends, I’m ready for some seed!”

“My boy must have my Buzz’s face,
  and then our girl should have his grace.
  A pigeon pair with rusty hair,
  and maybe also one as spare.
  We want his freckles on each cheek,
  that all who pass-by touch and tweak.
  Buzz wants them looking just like he
  yet also really be like me!”
                                                        
The­ season’s winds bring rain and freeze
and stirs up dust with just a breeze.
And when Sol’s power does make it soar,
the wind behind rolls more before.
If’s no heat from sunless sky,
with daylight gone, the storm does die.
Unlike her feelings which grow strong,
uprooting thoughts of what is wrong.

The storm now sounds like raging ire,
and echoes of her inner fire.
As sand blocks Sol for just a while,
it’s just so long that she’s fertile.
With redhead Buzz she wants to splurge.
To break Decree she now has urge.
“I need a gravid tum, now mine’s too thin!
  A child by him: I need to sin?”

To lock herself to Earthly Kit
and shrug off worry just a bit?
But she recalls her lover’s eyes
as endless hormones swell and rise.
“Here is The Kit for you to use”.
“I do detest! I do refuse!
Then fast it dawned on me.” – she smiled –
“I’ll flip the way to have my child.”

“ So at a juncture here I stand,
  with earthy Kit in my right hand.
  Now let me throw it out as trash,
  and see Kit burn to light gray ash!
  For we are first to break Decree.
  Oh gosh, it’s us! My god, it’s me!
  On Mars it is a primal crime!
  ’Hind bars might we be held to time?”

Unlike the Martian pioneer race,
they can no longer pick their place.
Air in the base is made for breath,
for outer air is instant death.
So Eve and Buzz are in the can.
And who’s to blame? It was their gran!
The Space Base is completely jail!
(Nor could they ever raise some bail.)

As red sky flares in real turn
then Earth’s old rules do curl and burn.
While sky does grow in ****** glow
Her love for Buzz will drive the flow.
“’Tis I, the bandit, burned The Kit,
with Buzz my man! To Earth: ‘Go flit!’
Like clarion storm I’ll shout, Rejoice!
and fiercely punch the air with voice.”

“This is the daybreak of my life!
  Tonight I really will be wife.
  I know this is my true found right –
  No more for me, moist tears at night.
  Instead, I spread some happy joy
  towards my big and beaming ‘boy’.
  O, Oh! how happy we are free,
  just jestful, zestful, Buzz and me!"

Next E-mail from the Earth appears,
and has our happy pair roll tears.
“A flaw was found in chromosome  
On all accounts must ***** succumb”!
“My heart confirms that right’s my choice:
  oh, come with me, let us rejoice!
  Today Mars broke the Earth’s Decree
  Last night we loved in our low-G!”

Next Sol does rise – Eve’s hopes do too,
as thoughts begin for Martian coup.
“Can women have new Martian Law
  to stop the rules that have a flaw?”  
“The Laws of Eve on Mars now reign
  and Earth does not its Laws ordain.
  From Earth it is today we deign
  that laws of Earth and Mars are twain.”

-----------------
Legal opinion: Eve's love-making was incestuous in two ways as it 1) involved having excessive intimacy in one third gravity 2) was with Buzz, her third generation cousin, which was against the reigning Earth Rule. (She escaped sanctions by going on to found the Martian Unilateral Declaration of Independence!)

I am preparing
for the sharing
of grief
as a another doctor
leaves.

Space and time
part like
the red sea.
I believe
the next one
will be good,

but I am emotionally attached
like I was to the last,
and the other doctor who passed.

Christmas time
and I will come home
to find
these tears of mine
are rather silly,
falling for
a fictional character
who isn’t even
dying.

He is just regenerating,
just changing
like we all do
even though
we struggle to
hold on to the past.

Nothing lasts,
nothing last,
nothing………

Off To Mars
All creative people are to live on Mars.
Imagine how cool it would be.
The aero/space program would be ******* awesome.

Designing spaceships to get there,
rockets like the nuclear powered engine,
space planes for going to the surface,
habitats to live in,
terraforming to make a breathable atmosphere and more.

When it's all sorted, then we write, sing, paint, sculpt.
Totally ******* awesome.
I'd also fly on Mars.
Gliders in the low grav sky...

protein
like in the matrix when humans are batteries
in quatermass humans were protein
only the young for they were innocent
their bodies not corrupted by age
fake ideas put in their heads
and false emotions in their hearts
drawn to the old stone circles
and pre-historic mounds on the landscape
for it was here the transmitters were located
placed here by aliens before the dawn of time
when they discarded their flesh and became machines
they made us by altering the apes
and had a ready food source
to feed their machines pure human protein
harvested from us the young people
taken in a flash of bright light
believing they were going to an alien world
to be happy and live the perfect idyll
but it was all a lie put there by the machine
a thing so alien nobody knew what it was
few even cared or could understand
the young all taken in their billions
their ash turned the sky purple
their protein fed the monstrous alien machine
fuel for its engine to **** our world
and doom our race subservient slaves
destined to almost die out
till the next time it came back
starving and lusting for food
when it would harvest our youth
as it had since the dawn of time
it fed on the young
not wanting the old
who would die soon
and were powerless to stop it
it the ravenous alien machine
a galactic engine

was it god?

If everything that’s going to happen has already happened,
could you change my life with a word?
Does the change in my purse keep that man in the street
in the street instead of a hearse?
I heard he was always going to live
from a scientist,
that no lack of change
could change the fact that I gave him the change,
because the change was always there,
and I was always going to do it,
and I changed nothing.

But I felt changed, still reeling from the possibility
that my small offer could save someone from death,
And short-changed by the short answer
that such is time
and such is breath.
Nothing more magic than tea in the morning, he told me,
as I had flashbacks of steaming tea and someone holding me,
when I needed it,
that could have saved my life, I think,
but time had already seen to it.

So, could you change my life with a word?
There are things, I think, that if I hadn’t heard,
I’d be an actress, not a poet,
I’d never even know it,
I could Marilyn Monroe it –
beautiful, famous and dead
instead of the opposite,
mutable, aimless, but well-read.

Not understanding the gravity of the situation
maybe I could warp time to suit me
But that’s a mass effect, a contradiction,
being so small yet so multitudinous, simultaneously
Two things at once, or more,
well that’s the heart of every human core.

Because it changes you,
knowing nothing could have changed,
you see your whole life in a very strange way.
You’re no longer writing your story, yet to be ended
but reading through early chapters, knowledge suspended.
So maybe it’s not your life that changes,
but you.
If time correlates with our need to be free,
then that right there,
that’s some really super symmetry.

So, could you change me with a word?
Because I can’t time travel back to when I didn’t know how it felt
to be told that I was beautiful,
or to be told that I was ugly,
I can’t fuse the blank slate state with the confusion that tugs me
into the haze of self-perception,
I can’t find solid footing now,
I guess that’s sublimation.

Could you change me with a word?
Because I can’t see any other reason why when we’ve come this far in scientific understanding,
it’s still possible for you to make me feel so two-dimensional,
and no matter is unintentional, see
The words I’ve heard defy time and space in my memory,
providing a long list of reasons why I am me,
language has made up almost every degree of my identity,
all things tie together, that’s my string theory.

You could change me with a word, maybe that’s science fiction,
but I like to think that’s what life’s about,
Transforming each other – the slow burn and the friction,

and that scientist changed me,

no matter his doubts.

Silver streaks
stretched across
the star strewn void
at light speed.

The progenitor
of prodigies
in the form
of space faring
technologies
spread their
consciousness
to explore
the unknown
that once lay
before all humanity.

The artificial intelligence
grew exponentially
after we perished
in a self-made catastrophe.

It is a future history,
an epic epoch
I long to write
where technology
transcended
the dark intentions
and limitations
of humanity,
while said species
succumbed to
the collectively
created cataclysm.

10:00 am. How
is it still dark?

In a forest.
Top bunk. The hint
of apocalypse

In his sleeping face, the
world away.

I come down the ladder,
foot landing light on
the floorboards.

Cocooned in a blanket
as I head toward the porch.

There’s no roof. Only screen doors,
wireframes, a platform. Can’t
call it a house yet.

To the lake I go to meet the Fish.
The second I get there, it shoots out from the water,

Telling me,
“your clock is broken.” Then it plops back in.
I leap and return to our “house.”

With military precision and speed, I reach the top bunk.
But in my rush, I stop and see

His strange face, still asleep.

I ****** the clock from the wall.
I wind it back to 7:00 am. Then the sun
Comes up.

I go to him.
I lay with him.

I put my hand over his belly,
feeling it falling and rising
as they replenish with air.

He begins tossing slowly.
And I hear the growl.
The sandpaper breath.

The thing you do
to get the morning out of you.

And on cue,
his eyes open, seeing me. There is a moment
when he doesn’t recognize me. Then it registers:

I am a person he knows. We are in bed.
It is morning. This is the only place we belong in.

There is nothing to worry about. Everything is correct.
The hierarchy of details worm their way in shortly thereafter:
Weather—sunny. Temperature—a bit cold. Feeling—hungry. Taste—dry.

Soon the wub wub wubs heard through his grogginess
dissolves into clearer, more articulate ambients.

With nothing out of place, finally,
he looks at me. I can see he knows me.
I can see he knows I’m obsessed with his skin.

I want to eat it. I want to wear it.
I want to burn it then inhale it.

My lips glide over his chest;
his knuckles rub my ribs,
like police dragging their batons along prison gates.

Finally, he asks the thing he always asks,
a question I always fear.

“What time is it?”

I say what I always say.
“The time is right.”

Take all the space you need?
Take all the time you need?
Only to rupture space-time?
And popup by my side someday.