From dejla@ix.netcom.com Sun Aug 18 21:17:01 1996 Date: Sun, 11 Aug 1996 12:06:54 -0700 From: Deborah Laymon To: b5-creative@lists.best.com Subject: Poetry offering I don't really write poetry, I write monologues. Well, this one is sort of a -- dualogue. Halfway between darkness and light. "We have made a covenant with death, and with hell are we at agreement...."* Also better to serve in Hell then die in Heaven.... Icarus fell. Did you hear her screaming, half the galaxy away, "Starkiller"? Silt grated under our struts, A wind so strong we swore its taste bled through our protective suits rocked the ship. Icarus stumbled. We stumbled. Someone... no, I don't remember whom can't remember won't remember stumbled on it. The Pit. A fissure, a gash, a rupture cut deep into the crust, as if some giant's hand wielded a scimitar against the earth itself. An odd concept, don't you think? The earth of Z'ha'dum... The earth of an alien planet, And I held it in a gloved hand, let it crumble between my fingers. Did it scream? Or was it a silent wound? A well, gaping into blackness, the depths shielding secrets, tempting us, tantalizing us... We were a scientific mission. Seekers. Scientists. Hunters. Searchers. Curious. Curiosity killed the cat. Our instruments, silver and black, cautious dainty delicate extensors long needle-like eyes and fingers reached into the chasm. Silence. A long silence. A wind drowning all our insignificant sounds. An ebony well, darker than a black star. And then... Fire. Fire and pain. Fire and pain and knowledge... "Hot as hell". I still laugh at the words. Hell--a place so frigid the cold consumes you. Imagine--can you?-- an arctic fire raking your skull open, axes with frozen blades striking rending flesh and bone shredding brain and heart and soul... They wakened. They rose. They offered us a choice... They offered eternity one way or another. Eternity, power, knowledge, a universe where we walked beside Them-- The stars paled beside Them as They rose from their forgotten graves in sheltering dark turned crimson eyes to the star-littered sky and offered us--the choice. I heard them dying, the fools... in the dark, the frigid desert. Tell me, hero, would you cling to your sentimental pride, nobility, ethics... When the giants rose and stalked you? Would you have condemned your wife to die like that... An animal writhing, begging to die... I heard them. I heard them. I hear them... still... First, I served. Then I learned. We learned. Now my presence increases, my influence rises like the smoke from the chasm. I am Shadow and Substance. I watch you and laugh where you cannot hear. Your petty schemes, your little mongrel alien pet After Anna, what does Delenn offer? your plans and posturing drop into the rift, the black hole of failure once you destroyed a Black Star by trickery, tactics of misleading. The Shadows exist outside time, outside reality... Into the dark, the ice-enlaced dark where no song, no light endures... And you threaten me, you death-frightened, light-blinded children, shaking your little fists against the Shadows climbing the walls with needle feet... Pathetic infants struggling to light feeble candles. Eternity dangles beyond your fragile fingers. Eternity in hell, eternity in the dark. And I-- I reach above you, I hold the universe in my hands, Shadows spill over my fingertips. I hold the universe in one cupped palm, reach down and pinch out the little star-flames as I please. Dark. So dark. The light dies, and there is nothing with which to warm myself... *Isaiah xxviii. 15. Deborah Laymon dejla@ix.netcom.com You are in front of me. If you value your lives, be somewhere else.