PostPoems Be Artistic. Be Creative. Be Inspired!

[a reply to Damon Knight's story, "Masks"]

A brain case, with its spinal tube intact,

occupies the apex of the ancient junk pile;

having been disconnected from torso and limbs

by the project director's graduate assistant,

and left here as dysfunctional junk

on the day before the graduate assistant

offered some extra-credit assistance

to the newly divorced project director.

Neither of them knew the brain case contained

an active mind, trifurcating itself

into three complexities of thought.

The first was endless confinement,

trapped in this apparatus of limited dimension,

with neither sensory input from the world,

nor the release of response to that input;

only a sense (ever mounting

geometrically, like a hideous

half life in maniacle reverse)

of entrapment, of walls enclosing:

isolation squared and cubed,

and that product squared and cubed;

and squared and cubed again in an

infinite loop that could not be escaped.

The second was a detailed replay

of the memory of a murdered dog;

murdered and its corpse abused,

for no better reason than hatred

of that which lived in its natural flesh

according to natural instincts.

The third, more horrible than the other two,

depicted the prospect of complete

of utter annihllation,

 of thought extinguished,

after the slow unraveling into

entropy

the ultimate existenstial terror.

The mining apparatus,

on one of the Jovian moons---

the promise for which the sacrifice

of a body too injured, by accicent

to be repaired was not too much---

disappeared from serious consideration

as quickly as a Congressman's honesty.

Thus ended the journey, that never began,

on the salience of a heap of debris,

at the foot of which all sorts of dogs

squat to evacuate their bodies' wastes.