Recumbent Moon

Recumbent Moon by ChloeJPoetry

The moon is reclining,
declining
to stand upright
tonight.

by @ChloeJPoetry

The Cactus

In the desert at night it is cold
Ice in the crevices
The sky is clear and dark
Stars shine there
How do you see them?
For me time moves faster
I live longer
It is relative
My stars are streaks
I live in a blurred circle of white blue
My desert
My sky
All around me is silver glitter
I lift my limbs high

Wild

go mad with the world
when it brings you nothing but pain
it’s a shame you hum with bees
stroll with elephants
when you’d rather
howl at the moon and prowl with the wolves.

By Viva Andrada-O’Flynn

At Least We Didn’t Call It Goofy

by J.M. Strother

The fleet slowed to sub-light speed in the shadow of the moon, all indications their approach had gone completely unnoticed.“Command-dak Ahnmoshgnagrif, all ships reporting, ready and in position,” Comms-head Ihurehriv informed him.

Command-dak Ahnmoshgnagrif rose on his four legs to full height, swiveling his eye-stalks to take in every member of his helms-crew. All were poised and ready. His heart-sack thrummed with pride. He waved a forefoot toward the wall and the plasma display field flicked on.

“Open the Hypercom, that I may address the troops.”

“Hypercom open, Sir.”

The Command-dak turned toward the field so he could be seen by all.

“Attention all ships. Attention all hands. In a few moments, we will deploy in the Ter Rhan Gu attack formation. We will be detected upon deployment, but our adversaries will have no time to react. Today the glory and honor of the Jhungrhuani will be restored. You will live forever in the heart-sacks of our people. Never again will the Jhungrhuani be insulted by these pretentious little bastards.”

The audacity of these puny Humans – downgrading Jhungrhu to planetoid status. Never mind that they couldn’t even get the name right. They’d get a downgrade, alright, to the newest asteroid belt in the solar system. ~ © 2011 by J. M. Strother, all rights reserved.

Me, Myself and I

Walking on this stony ground
Pushing through this thorny crowd
Celestial bodies cry out
Sometime I wish to dismount
The fires of creation
That made me seek sensation
And so the –
Stars are shredding my heart
The sun is shredding my soul apart
The Moon is mashing up my mind
I wonder what they will find
Dissecting
Me, Myself and I

By Saffy

Celestial Montage

Celestial Montage ESA_space_inspiration

Did Life fall into this cradle
This Earth, this home –
We now attempt to climb out of?
Or is it more than a cradle
Some crucible or potters wheel
Shaping and baking us in forms renewed?

Maybe in truth it is a bit of both
And as humanity takes its first toddler steps
We begin to see the variety that our world holds

LIFE –

Life here investigated
In case of alien brethren
Life searched for by the heart if not the mind
As the astronaut steps out into the void
For themselves, for us, for a future
A future – As yet unknown
A future for us all
As we grow too large for this world to contain
A cradle we have explored from end to end

But it is only with eyes freshly opened
To the wonders beyond
That we begin to see what we have missed
That which hides in plan sight
The beauty of our world
We seek its twins, our mirrors –
Its twisted folly of form

OUT THERE

And if we are on our own?
Then look at the wonders the search has wrought
And if we are not?
Then maybe we will truly see ourselves
For the first time

Until then the void is calling
And all these things?

These investigations
These satellites
And images –
Are our jumping off point
Our call to the unknown

Do you wonder what it will answer?

By Sarah Snell-Pym

The Occultation

You see my love, it is not nightfall,
there are no lengthening shadows
nor dampening dew,
just the air settling like caresses
on your lips, your nape,
and the darkening

is but an otherworldly gloom,
a prelude
while the moon makes her slow tracks
across the face of the sun,
draws his scorch to her fullness
and into her gape.

In the passing,
the lost birdsong can be a blessed space
to fill with tender sighs.
Come, let not obscuring argument
block our dreams,
we can endure.

And like the skies
when our bodies have parted,
the brightness in my eyes will eclipse
anything
you’ve ever seen there
before.

©Vicky Hampton August 2016

Star Stuff

Star stuff filtered through the cosmos
Star stuff smaller than dust
Hurtling away from explosive stella deaths

Star stuff heavy metal elements of choice
Star stuff light hydrogen and helium in plasma soup
Colliding, destroying, reforming
Different atoms to be
Diffusing out from red giant expansion
Layers of reaction
Different star mechanisms for different elements
Star stuff permeating the void
Drifting away from it’s crucible bed of origin

Star stuff amalgomated clouds, a nursery shroud
Nebulea of new star birth and planetary spheres
Spinning in eccentric concentric dance

One planet of star stuff
Still pummeled by larger bits of star dust
A planet like all made of star stuff
A planet were the inorganic began to replicate
A planet were star stuff became organic
Became something more, became organised into organisms

Star stuff alive
Star stuff crawling on beaches of star dust
With elements of stella origins making up the cellular core

Star stuff walk
Star stuff talk
Star stuff refines elements from stella explosions
Ands send a rocket to the stars
Star stuff has been watching the starts since it first became aware
Now it is time for star stuff to truelly see what is out there

By Sarah Snell-Pym

Cosmic Scar Tissue

Dark scars marked the edges of the cosmos
Deep within the universal core slithering with a pulse
Time counted in an endless rhythm that will end
Will slither to a close
Supping and sucking and draining the energy
Moment by moment
Until the fragments of time can be cut
To another slither
Creaking the gears of celestial machinery grind to a halt
Nothing can now ever be again
Existence is futile
Futures are not to be
Hope and dreams lay bleeding
Pulped to something horrendous
Within the blaze of a creation maimed

We watched it all in Black and White

They say if you remember the ‘60s
You weren’t really there
But the moon landing I recall very well
Watching it from my armchair.
Everyone I knew around my own age
Had stayed up to watch it all night
Crowded around their small TVs
Watching in black and white.

We’d followed the ‘Space Race’ for several years
And incredible as it now seems
For someone to actually set foot on the moon
Was the epitome of our dreams.
The 60s were a time of great change
The ‘West’ was embroiled in ‘Cold War’
But that night we forgot about all that
As we watched the moon landing in awe.

Earlier the Soviets had led the way
With their Soyuz ahead in the Race
With monkeys and dogs and Gagarin
Launching them all out into space.
Rivalry in space between 2 great nations
Both vieing for pole position
Now the Soviets had been pipped to the post
By the Apollo 11 mission.

We watched it all in black and white.
Celebrations were everywhere
When the words ‘The Eagle has landed’came
We knew how brave those astronauts were
Armstrong, Aldrin and Collins
They were heroes of their time
Taking that ‘one small step for man’
But a ‘Giant leap for Mankind’.

By Marion Feasey