Space Junk

WARNING: space junk ahead

“Trash of trash planets

spiraling through the cosmos,

clogging the asteroid avenues,

rendering the wormholes impassable.”

A mangled boot,

A can of Coke Zero whiz by—

“Not to worry, dear young lifeform!

That déclassé planet is scheduled for

Total Global Elimination

to revitalize the Milky Way.”

Outer space drools watercolors,

indigo, mustard, magenta comet trails like

pulsing worms through black soil.

A little hovercraft peters past,

oblong metallic insectoid

creepy crawling up a canopy,

each cosmic branch stretching taut

the fabric of the universe.

“But what is that planet called?”

Gelatinous eyes roll back

in their forty sockets,

a lifeform exhales exasperated methane

with the universal pomposity of adults.

“Formerly known as Earth.

Orbiting a weak, puttering star.

A dying world

home to simple beings

confined to three dimensions.”

The alien progeny is puzzled,

its thirteen brains sending neural pulses

of crushed stardust

to its central processing unit.

And then from his undulating soundbox:

“But where will Earth’s life go?

When it has no home,

no galaxy-craft to scatter it across the universe,

no soft sleeping-pod and hot goop

after a long day in outer space?”

On the frictionless side of the hovercraft’s

three thick quarkometers of ultraviolet starglass,

a supernova blooms:

dying, crumpling, smashing,

mass and molecules rippling in a layered cake.

“Their hallmark near-sightedness

was a genetic handicap;

they could not see their own disaster

even as they tiptoed to the edge.

Take pity on creatures that can only see time’s fabric

as it unfurls around their consciousness,

no farther forward or behind.

They were doomed from the beginning.

They were creative, though, I’ll give them that.

Tango, mariachi, mascara, macaroons.

Pennies, poetry, pickles, balloons, baseball bats.

Chess boards, cellos, elevators, jumbo jets.

Nuclear bombs, nacho cheese, psychotherapy, liposuction.

And a peculiar thing called the spork.

We'll visit the Museum, son,

the Museum for a Better Tomorrow,

and we’ll browse the Hall of Humanity,

a sad, trivial, three-dimensional study,

but sometimes

a little near-sightedness is good for the minds.”