Voyagers
Page 9
Into the burn of his lunar descent,
he calibrated landing zones
between the craters of his eyes.
After touchdown, the fl ight plan listed
rest, then extra-vehicular activity.
On impulse, Rusty raised the hatch,
shuffl ed down the ladder to the surface
of the moon. His left foot marked the dust
beside his lover. And so it was
he broadcast for the ages – earth words
for the still unborn: ‘Woman,’ Rusty spoke
into his air-tight helmet. ‘Womankind.’
140
David Kārena-Holmes
Your Being
Your being is
a blazing star
that turns and burns
like Achernar,
like Fomalhaut
or Betelgeuse
in my darkling
universe.
A voyager
in time and space,
toward that light
I set my face.
141
John Dolan
In Which I Materialize, Horribly Maimed, in the
Transporter Room of the Enterprise
I materialize in the Enterprise transporter room
with an old weathered pitchfork jammed in my back
and the bloody tines dripping onto the fl oor.
‘Horror and compassion vie on their faces’
as they force themselves to take my arms and tenderly
bear me down to Sick Bay where Doctor McCoy’s face
twists in rage: ‘My GOD, Jim!
what kind of BARBARIANS would –’
then at a gesture from the captain, McCoy calms himself,
puts a painless pneumatic needle on my arm –
endorphins. Product of the fi nest twenty-fi fth century
pharmaceutical research. No dirty cut heroin,
this is pleasure itself, pleasure incarnate, past argument.
They do what they can to ease
The little time I have left. They gather
round my antigravity couch as I wake,
try to smile. The same fl inching awe
on all their faces as they stare at me. McCoy is crying.
Spock takes his place. The raised Vulcan eyebrow –
highest praise! He says evenly, ‘It would appear…’
a pause – ‘… that you have …
suffered much.’ Then, afraid to go too far,
he adds, ‘… For a human, at any rate.’
Ah, that last bit of bluff, no matter!
Spock is impressed! Spock! Then Kirk,
gesturing at the pitchfork, ‘How did you … how could you …
live – walk – go on?’
I shrug. I am as good as the Mongols now!
To them I am Medieval!
I smile: ‘… In my day everyone … was like this.
It was … no big deal.’ McCoy, appalled: ‘NO BIG DEAL?’
142
Kirk motions him to silence, says quietly,
‘You bear up well, Mister…?’
‘Oh my name … doesn’t matter. What year is this, Captain?’
And before he can answer I die.
143
Mark Pirie
The Rescue Mission
Captain’s log: Planet Z, Dec 26th 2146
Spent all day
loading bodies
into the
newly-formed
crater.
Bits of
the new Galaxy
Tourism
Industry’s
spaceship
were
embedded
in the remains.
We were
instructed
to remove
the fragments
at all cost,
for examination
back home;
money and
capital gain
were at stake
for entrepreneurs
and political gain
was defi nitely
at stake
for many
a ruler
on Earth.
144
I’d put
covers over
the worst
of them
faintly recalling
old fi lm reconstructions of
Medieval Europe
with shallow
ditches along
roadsides.
Who’d ever
forget this;
not now,
at Xmas time.
‘Are these
ones dismembered
or incinerated?’
Yuri asked.
‘No, hold on, those go
in the other crater,’
I replied fearfully.
Edwards Jr
separating part of a leg
from planetary rock
swivelled round
complaining his
girlfriend’d
just txt’d him
holidaying
at Hanmer Springs:
‘Who’d be a thrill
seeker eh?’ she
piped in new
numeric code
145
scrambled through
space.
But Edwards Jr,
always the optimist,
txt’d her back
reminding her
that space travel
was never easy,
and Yuri now
trying to smile
with half a torso
piggy-backing
him said as
he jumped
into the crater, ‘I
always knew
it’d
be like you Americans
say “one hell of
a joy-ride!”’
146
Tze Ming Mok
Lament of the imperfect copy of Ensign Harry Kim
Episode 5.18, Stardate 52586.3. As their bodies begin to degrade, the Voyager crew gradually discover that they are cloned copies of the original Voyager crew. The clone of Harry Kim is the fi rst to die, in a cave while on reconnaissance.
Your quickening sunrise claws
through broken cornea
as we did, towards a
federal unity of design –
I cannot now remember
the motto’s original wording,
something the opposite of
‘WE are the Borg.
YOU will be assimilated’.
Imperfections rupturing my
cortex are blossoms
of doubt my original lacks.
How many copies
could there be, and if
we all heaved and leapt
as one to the ground, how many
forests would be heard
rising round the
other hemisphere?
If we stood end to end,
which moon would we reach,
and what walls would we see
from there? Feel for
all us Ensigns, each
slightly off like
Pound’s calligraphy,
‘gone and on the going’,
every stroke a not-quite
Harry Kim; I am so damn
147
sick of him. As the eyes are
gone, and cavities
collapsing, let me slip off
behind our time’s faint
surface glimmer, to where
I could have been
a Sulu, sitting with
presence and grace, as a
shogun’s son on the open fi eld
in Kurosawa’s Ran, smiling
with fi stfuls of unbroken
arrows. Or a Vulcan, a Klingon
or a liberated Borg. They have pride.
They mock us and are correct
in posture, uncontracted
in grammar, unshackled
in the main, like the
old man in Bladerunner, twittering
in Cantonese to his eyeballs
in the steaming vat, who
didn’t have answers, he
just did eyes, or the
noodle-jockey who
wouldn’t speak English
but watched Deckard
smooth splinters from chopsticks
in wait for the fi nish line,
yes, any of those garbled masses
run through in a
clamouring night by
some pale hero,
an army, an infi nite
platoon of Eights –
sleepers to the bone,
never captured
in the Daily Galactica headline:
‘Valeri shoots Captain, self’,
watching our
148
adopted parents fall
as will falls – let me be
among them,
obstructive, closed and
let me not be called
‘Harry’. To no longer
miss my unfl eshed mama
or play Riker’s white jazz on the clarinet
or have aced quantum mechanics
while never, ever getting laid, at all.
Already the twenty-fourth
century – so much time
wasted, and now none left
to eat even my own
wasted organs
with my bitterness,
to show contempt for
my last moment
on this foreign satellite.
149
Nic Hill
Somewhere Else
it is strange
to stand
on a world so small
that you can reach out with a glove
and touch the horizon
for the sun to be
a small light
among a multitude of others
for the face in the sky
to be a falling raging giant
with one red eye
to stand
on the shores of an ocean
that isn’t made of water
home is years away
my mind
wasn’t made for this
where else would I be
but here
150
Tim Jones
The stars, Natasha
Natasha, fundamentals are strong,
key indicators steady.
Leave your books, Natasha,
let your computer
draw patterns on its screen.
Walk with me through the heavens.
Along cold orbits
the spendthrift stars
squander their assets on light.
The World Bank
is unamused; the IMF
is noting down their names.
So take my hand
let’s drift away
into the cosmic background.
151
Mike Webber
My Personal Universe
My universe
Where I make my verse
Is black and green
And mostly unseen
Galaxies and thoughts
A nebulous emerald
Stomach a supernova
Not easily fi lled
My cores have been drilled
My eyes saw through
Bore into
An almost blue
Black hole.
I will trust
Those that come to my crust
Save some of my worlds
That have the beauty of girl
Come and expand that language
To my green dark galaxy
My universe in spreading
Like golden honey
Across your tender buttery feminine toast
I move green suns and star clouds across
A cross word is never said
In my galaxy, my universe.
In my universe
I worship you
Under stars crossed with intensity
If I ever lose my propensity
For loving you
152
In my empty, void, dark, sparkling, magical Universe of green and black
Send your rocket ships in
And bring me back.
153
Bill Sewell
Space & Time
a long time ago
in a galaxy far far away
are things that we know
and things that amaze –
lumbering space cruisers
with rows of winking lights
idle in orbit then glow
and vanish into the Milky Way
their crews ever youthful
in uniforms by Gucci:
the stars have closed together
no more endless waiting
for news of other worlds –
but where with all
this star-hopping it ends
who it was ignited
the big bang anyhow
and why the eternal
bickering & jostling
is a mystery as ever –
in the next millennium
on a planet in the system
of Sagittarius the legions
will march against a savage
tribe of forest-dwellers
154
the inhabitants of the ninth
planet of Altair enjoyed
a gravitational pull so weak
they fl oated in the air
in the constellation of Aquarius
the primeval soup has scarcely
begun to bubble:
between the stars
are whirlpools which
may suddenly suck you
into another galaxy
a long time ago
far & further away
and as you spin
you may be treated
to glimpses of worlds
before now & after –
what colours
and what confusion:
the journey to satisfy
your ever-probing eye.
155
Contributor Notes
Fleur Adcock was born in New Zealand and now lives in London. She received the Queen’s Gold Medal for Poetry in 2006. Her poetry books include Poems 1960-2000. For more details and video see http://www.bloodaxebooks.com Raewyn Alexander, from Hamilton, now an Aucklander, has a BIC from Unitec, and is an author of novels, stories, non-fi ction and poetry. The Overload Poetry Festival, Melbourne, has invited her to read many times. Her latest poetry collection, Museum of Lost Days, is from the Earl of Seacliff Art Workshop, and Tiny Titles poetry books are sold around Auckland. See http://
www.myspace.com/raewynalexander
Born in Spain and living permanently in New Zealand since 1995, Puri Alvarez has published work in both countries, mostly in anthologies and literary magazines. The extraordinary and the ordinary humanity, the supernatural as well as nature itself, are her sources of inspiration. She writes mostly poetry and short stories.
Jenny Argante is a Tauranga-based writer and professional editor, a member of the editorial team for Bravado, the literary arts magazine from the Bay of Plenty.
She has been widely published in New Zealand, the UK and North America.
Jenny most enjoys the challenges of poetry.
Tony Beyer writes and teaches in New Plymouth, Taranaki. His Dream Boat: Selected Poems was published by HeadworX in 2007. He edited the bi-annual collection Poetry Aotearoa, a selection of New Zealand poetry for Australian readers through Picaro Press, Sydney.
Peter Bland was born in Yorkshire, England, in 1934. He emigrated to New Zealand at age 20 where he met the ‘Wellington Group’ of poets. He has worked for many years as an actor, both in New Zealand and abroad, as well as a writer.
He currently lives in England, where his Selected Poems a
ppeared from Carcanet in 1998. His latest collection is Mr Maui’s Monologues (Steele Roberts, 2008).
Iain Britton had his fi rst collection of poems, Hauled Head First into a Leviathan, which was a Forward Poetry Prize nomination, published by Cinnamon Press (UK) in February 2008. Interactive Publications (Australia) will be publishing his second collection, Liquefaction, in 2009.
Alan Brunton (1946-2002) was a poet, scriptwriter, and performer, closely associated with the Red Mole theatre group. He was also the founding editor of Freed magazine in the late 1960s and the small press Bumper Books in the 1990s. A memorial page for Alan is at http://www.nzepc.auckland.ac.nz/
authors/brunton/recollections.asp For further information, see http://www.
bookcouncil.org.nz/writers/bruntonalan.html
156
Dana Bryce is a New Zealand poet.
Rachel Bush is a Nelson writer whose work has appeared in anthologies and in periodicals such as Sport, Takahe, The Listener, and the electronic journal Turbine. The most recent of her three books of poetry, All Patients Report Here, was published by Wai-te-ata Press in 2006.
Alistair Te Ariki Campbell was born in Rarotonga in 1925. He moved to New Zealand on the death of his parents in 1933. A prolifi c author, he has published four novels, a radio play, and 18 collections of poems, including most recently Just Poetry and It’s Love, Isn’t It?: The Love Poems (both from HeadworX). His many awards, including the Pacifi c Island Artists’ Award and an Hon DLitt (from Victoria University of Wellington), culminated in an ONZM and a Prime Minister’s Award for Literary Achievement in Poetry in 2005.
Meg Campbell (1937-2007), a well-known New Zealand poet, married the poet Alistair Te Ariki Campbell. They lived in Pukerua Bay for 47 years. Meg published six collections of poetry, beginning with The Way Back, which won the PEN Award for Best First Book of Poetry in 1982. Her fi nal book, Poems Adrift, came out on 17 November 2007, a day after she died.
Gordon Challis was born in Wales in 1932. Emigrating to New Zealand in 1953, he studied at Victoria University of Wellington. He has worked as a journalist and social worker here and abroad. He now lives in Takaka, Golden Bay. His poetry books are Building (Caxton Press, 1963), Other Side of the Brain (Steele Roberts, 2003) and Luck of the Bounce (Steele Roberts, 2008).
Janet Charman’s sixth collection, cold snack (AUP, 2007), won the 2008
Montana NZ Book Award for Poetry in 2008. Charman was Literary Fellow at the University of Auckland in 1997 and her recent work can be found online at: http://jacketmagazine.com/36/index.shtml Her website is http://www.nzepc.
auckland.ac.nz/authors/charman/index.asp
Mary Cresswell is a science editor from Los Angeles. She lives in Kapiti and has published in a variety of online and print journals. Her book of satiric verse, Nearest and Dearest, is to be published by Steele Roberts in 2009. More information: http://www.bookcouncil.org.nz/writers/cresswellmary.html James Dignan is an English-born writer, artist, and musician living in Dunedin. His writing mainly consists of articles and reviews for the Otago Daily Times, but also includes songs, poems, and short stories. He has also had several solo exhibitions of his paintings. His website: http://www.grutness.co.nz John Dolan taught English at Otago for 10 years, then moved to Canada, where he became a pauper. He is now living the demeaning and exhausting life of an aged freelance writer. It serves him right. His books include Stuck Up (1995), People with Real Lives Don’t Need Landscapes (2003) and Pleasant Hell (2005).