Fantasy Machine

Desperately alien

I stand and watch

amidst the floating
celibate hermaphrodites,
degenerate and cool
within their mushroom skins
and their luxurious feathers.

And in a slightly different universe,
the fantasy machine
ground to a slow halt.

The driver turned and saw
the multitude ploughed under,
a disorderly field
stretching out toward
time's light horizon.

They'd waited for the rains that never came.
The sun never rose
the stars never fell
and all was white and silent

And if you travelled further still
You'd come upon
more broken bodies slow
against the marbled rocks,
feeble scratching, feeble reaching
feeble pleading never heard
and never minded

Far away, in a rosy cabin
deep within the oldest wood
they still talk in whispers
of the lost ones, those who left
so proud and arrogant that day,
looking down, mad horses stomping,
laughing so powerfully,
being so young.

StarFields 1999