Journeyman's Mission
One story in 6 tales
Last week, I wrote a series of poems about a protagonist who struggles to complete a mission. Ultimately it seems like he has maybe failed... but in the final poem, he's got his eyes set on the future. So success and failure is in the eye of the beholder. Here are all six in one place for those who don't want to click all over kingdom come.
ENJOY!
• Vacuum – Part 01
• Gravity – Part 02
• Orbit – Part 03
• Static – Part 04
• Bloom – Part 05
• Ash – Part 06
Vacuum
Part one of a series of six poems about a metaphoric journey.
Vacuum
Not cold here. Or warm. Or loud. Or quiet.
It just is.
No lust. Or chastity. Or longing. Or Satiation.
It just is.
Not refreshing. Or tired. Or excited. Or dull.
It just is.
It just is.
Weightless.
Unmoored.
Liminal.
Lightless.
There—the tug of gravity.
The single orienting quality of this place.
My compass spins wildly.
But I can always sense down.
Gravity
“Love is the one thing that we’re capable of perceiving that transcends dimensions of time and space.”
Part two of a series of six poems about a metaphoric journey.
Gravity
Tiny bodies with their magnetisms
combine and combine
and compound—
exponential strength,
doubling, doubling,
then tripling—
Pull
Pull
Pull
Gathering larger
and more
and more—
an irresistible force
you might still break from
if you get a big enough
running start—
but then—
you realize
a critical mass has occurred—
and all you can do
is
f
a
l
l.
Orbit
Stay on target... stay on target—you’ve switched off your targeting computer, what’s wrong?
Part three of a series of six poems about a metaphoric journey.
Boosters fired for the third time.
Fuel burning low.
The arc of her Terrafirma
bends away below me,
as blue drags to black
and the seat grips hard—
Rumble and roar,
shake and shimmy,
hammering mind and body—
then—
—
Silence.
—
Now I can hear the desperate
whispers in my mind—
or are they coming
from outside?
Hiss and crackle
Vector nine-niner—
Moonfall sinking,
sinking,
sinking,
.
.
.
Rising.
Damn.
Here we go again.
Static
Filter QRN Sentinel Emissions with wisdom.
Part four of a series of six poems about a metaphoric journey.
Hisssssssssssssssss
Shshshshshshshshsh
Synthetic voice
Turn, turn heading 054—
Crackle and hiss
Little round dials
well worn and loved—
all channels
cranked to eleven.
Hiss and crackle
Fifty-seven signals
of need and overlapping want
but I only hear
one voice.
Crackle and hiss
Calling me back:
A faint Eurydice—
of peace,
of love—
Hiss and crackle
A message
I long to hear.
Lavender and lilt
piercing the night.
Crackle and hiss
But the myriad intrudes—
Sounds of infinity
From every possible
Source at once.
Hiss and crackle
Help us Obi-wan,
you are our only hope.
A ghost of longing in the voice,
Threads of static with silver light.
Crackle and hiss
Tuning the knob
I'm rent—
One voice distills,
and I am lost again.
Another—the legion
Grasping for salvation.
Hiss and crackle
I am only one—
There is no decision.
Conclusion forgone.
Bloom
Perhaps all the dragons in our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us act, just once, with beauty and courage
Part five of a series of six poems about a metaphoric journey.
From the embers of unraveling
Blossom the echoes of fallout.
Fragments of farewell and failure
Sprout the clover in the spring.
All that was—Not gone or forgotten,
That is hardly possible—
But ruminated and reconstituted,
Distilled to purity.
The fuel of what is next
More robust—
More beautiful—
More profound and alive.
Love always drawing quiet drink
From the clepsydra of time—
Through roots unknown,
Capillary ache drawing
New life up in majesty.
Between the synapses of stillness,
a spark leaping—
soft and electric.
Not loud, but essential.
Firing up the life-machine.
New, hungry, ambitious.
Opportunity born from recovery
And aspiring to greater things still.
Beauty blooms
Not in spite of death—
But because of it.
Ash
Moments pass, but we are the river always everywhere. At the source, at the fall, at the bridge, at the delta, in the ocean and in the mountain.
Part six of a series of six poems about a metaphoric journey.
Beyond the Ash
A new world built
on the dust of the fallen—
a society of trust and love.
Each day brighter
than the one before,
more gilded, more golden.
And I see you there,
and you see me.
There are hugs.
And tears.
And laughter.
Oh—
so much laughter.
Our hearts glow and burn
at the feeling of wholeness
discovered for the first time.
The completeness of our love
redeemed, generously,
by the governor of the future.
No longer bound by the rules of sin
and the trinity of self,
we are finally free: mind orbiting mind.
Bonded covalent of consciousness,
where thought doesn’t mirror—
it resonates, it mingles.
In the stable molecular mindspace,
there is an elegance of motion,
a choreography held in balance.
Not one,
but more than two.
In glorious continuity.
But first, comes patience,
and control,
while we wait and watch it all burn
to ash.
Thanks for sticking around through this series of poems. Journeyman is a spaceman. He's trying to get home. He'st trying to find peace he's trying to find satisfaction. He's trying to find happiness. He's trying to do what's right. But it's really beyond his ability as a navigator as a scientist. And all those things pilots need to be.
But he's doing his best. He fails some, he wins some. But over the course of six poems. Journeyman achieves the thing he always wanted... which—which was to go home. To be loved, and to to feel whole. And to never be afraid. To not just be happy but to give happiness.
I don't know if you got that from the poems, but that was my intent. That's where it came from. Thank you for reading them. Or listening to them as the case may be.
And in the immortal words of David Bowie: “May God's love be with you.”
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