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+ 27.225 MHz: April 15th, Early In The Morning
The night has become more quiet and still,
now that the screaming, and weeping, and
chattering of teeth have silenced. No further
explosions detonate. The groans or shrieks of
riveted steel---twisted by brute power that
none can measure, and none anticipated---
have ceased. The last fires were extinguished
some time ago. The last steam has dissipated.
They told you, once---a biography ago, it now
seems---that space is far colder than this water,
but that provides no comfort now. The familiar,
starlit darkness above you is so much unlike the
deadly calm darkness of the sea beneath you; and,
most frightening, the darkness that waits in
readiness to receive you, the lurking darkness
most unknown and most fearsome to you---the
gravity of it, pulling you closer, cannot be
escaped; your collision against it cannot be
postponed; and your consciousness of it will
never cease or dissipate in the least. Will the
tides and currents deliver you to some welcoming
shore, or will you plummet through the depths
like the great hulk before you did? That is a
scholars' question, or some most minor poet's,
but, right now, it seems somehow so meaningless.
Paradoxical---the vital force that animated you
all these years seems more tangible in its dwindling
than ever it did even at the peak of its flourishing;
yet it eludes your numbing grasp though you have
come to appreciate it ever so much more
than you ever did, conscientiously, before.
Accomplishments and successes, accumulated, do
not present themselves in a final parade through
your mind; only the failures remain to remind
you, the absences. the foul motives that will
never be fully explained, much less confessed and
absolved. Look up, look up once more while
your eyes still possess the perspectives of sight,
your brain still possesses the processes of thought,
your soul can still articulate this final feeling, and the
last of the pulses (began in your mother's womb)
approach their final, arthythmic course: look up---the
stars are as distant now as the life you are about to
relinquish, and they resemble (oh, God!, how much
they resemble) nothing more than glistening chips of ice.
Starward
It was wise to allow this
It was wise to allow this poetic thriller to emerge in its own time rather than settle for anything less than excellence, and after savoring the captivating poem, decades in the making and no less marvelous than Rod Serling's narration (and I agree that his monologues had a "tragic beauty" that is impossible to replicate), I'm glad I had the privilege of witnessing the event.
Apparently you had a more productive use for your cassette recorder; mine churned out bootleg music on tapes that eventually got tangled up in the machine. (Oh the horror!)
Your enthusiasm for this achievement is certainly warranted. You've earned some bragging rights! Congratulations on this.
Thank you so much for this
Thank you so much for this comment, too. I must confess that I did not always put my recorder to good use. And I had plenty of bootleg music on it, as well as the audio tracks of many science fiction and ghost stories. The casette with the Night Gallery episode on it eventually failed and got tantled up in the gears of the recorder---most of my casettes, for that year, met that same problem. I finally had to ask for a better one from my parents, then wait until Christmas, and then have fewer Christmas gifts under the tree. By that time, Night Gallery was not being syndicated in our area, and I had to wait for over a decade to hear that great monologue again. Serling passed away a couple of years later (Colicos left us in 2000); but they, and the Titanic, had touched my life permanently.
Thanks again for the second comment.
Starward
I'm so glad I didn't let this
I'm so glad I didn't let this stunning accomplishment slip by. Your prowess for eloquent narration, sculpting pulse-pounding spectacle and reeling readers headlong into drama from which they can't look away, makes its triumphant appearance in the first few lines.
With a title that offers full disclosure without being predictable, you could use your descriptive powers immediately and with dynamic effect: "The groans or shrieks of/ riveted steel---twisted by brute power that/ none can measure, and none anticipated" gives way to a dread you depicted with bewitching excellence, using the scenery and the brutal cold that almost made me shiver as your palette. The "lurking darkness" became your most formidable tool in your box of brilliance:
" . . . most unknown and most fearsome to you---the
gravity of it, pulling you closer, cannot be
escaped; your collision against it cannot be
postponed; and your consciousness of it will
never cease or dissipate in the least . . ."
You continue in a voice, silky, enchanting and chilling, shrewdly avoiding stanza breaks and deploying the second-person POV to keep the reader encased in the terror. To the end, although we know how it ends, we cannot look away, and somehow, cleverly, you managed to surprise me.
In death, the victim (us!) finds life "more tangible in its dwindling" and what weighs heavily upon the dying mind are lost opportunities to do good. Worldly success fades into irrelevance. How ravishingly you put us into this final, extreme perspective, and how ingeniously you ended on an image, seen through our eyes, that is not only poetic, but cinematic and illustrative.
Believe me, the impact of your verbal skills on this enthusiastic reader, rivals the best.
Thank you for that splendid
Thank you for that splendid comment, and for understanding what I was attempting to do.
In some ways, I have been waiting since the summer of 1972 to write this poem. Although my first instruction in Poetry was still eight months ahead in the future, I knew---as much as an awkward fourteen year old, still uncomfortable with my adolescent nature could know---that Rod Serling's words, in that episode of Night Gallery, constituted a real, bona fide poem, and was spoken as such by the highly talented actor, John Colicos. I recorded that episode on one of those small cassette audio recorders (remember them?) and I listened to them over and over again, haunted by the tragic beauty of Serling's words. Even though he did not know the ship broke apart at the last few minutes, that lack of knowledge has no affect on that marvelous monologue. My parents questioned, as they questioned so much of my natural preferences, why I should want to listen to that speech again and again; and I could not explain to them that it was a poem, not merely a small segment of a televised entertainment. After that, during any encounter I had---as a reader or viewer---with the legend of the Titanic, even Cameron's magnificent version, the words of Rod Serling, as delivered by John Colicos, always echoed in my mind. Earlier this month, I have watched several depictions of the disasterm on television as well as on YouTube, and I think that, at this late stage of my life, this poem was finally ready to---as some say about other situations---"come out."
Thanks again for reading the poem. I hope my enthusiasm for the poem does not seem to childish or self-centered. That ajward adolescent is still a part of me, with still clumsy effects as well.
Starward
See comment above. Meant to
See comment above. Meant to post my reply here but I had yet another senior moment.
That's okay, not a problem.
That's okay, not a problem. If you posted your comments on the Moon, more people would want to go there just to read them.
Starward