A Baptism of Fire and Death

Well, my ode to Star Trek: Voyager is finally complete. I think it was entirely written after midnight on three different nights. Fore some reason it just didn't seem right to write about space exploration and the death of the Sun during daylight hours. In the end, I really don't know what my story has to do with Captain Janeway and her crew, for Janeway is a far better woman than my Captain Anna Rand of the USS Babylon. Anna is, essentially, a scared woman, but after a baptism of fire and death, she discovers the "mere joy of living", which became the title of the exactly-2000-word story. She realizes that living in fear is a terrible waste of what could be a very good life. Now, because my computer is inherently evil, as the Germans say, I cannot format a quote in a terribly special format. So, here goes:

She looked out into the gaping void of universe again, and her mind fell into the familiar rhythm of those late nights and early mornings she had spent staring through the window of her soul. She heard the same question she had heard so many times before--the eternal, constant question that she had never had the nerve to answer. "What in this 'empty' universe is worth living for?" her conscience queried. Before she had toyed with pretty responses like knowledge and science, but now she knew. Finally, because the frail finger of fragility had tapped her shoulder, she could answer. "The mere joy of living," she intoned with resolve. Without another moment of hesitation, she kissed Raymond with the fieriest passion known to the human race--the desire to live, to truly live.

"Yes," she answered, "a good day."

It feels so wonderfully sublime to write of such a tragic event that is so positively uplifting and invigorating without being comic and morbid.

Eve's Song

Ignorance is bliss,

The songbirds chirped;

And in blind bliss she lived

Until one day a green gleam stole her gaze

And she cried, Oh, I  want to know.

For knowledge what will you give?

The snake slithered down;

And in timid naivety she approached

Eying the shimmering, forbidden orb

And she cried, Oh, I want to know.

You and your posterity shall know Death!

The Lord roared from above;

And her teeth pierced the tender flesh

As God's wrath rained down upon her

And she cried, Oh, I want to know.

Woman, you have ruined us,

Adam screamed to her;

And she descended Eden with a knowing smile

Seeing the many orchards of sweet fruit below

And she cried, Oh, I want to know.

And know I shall,

She solemnly pledged to herself;

And beginning the most sacred of quests

She freed another apple from the nearest tree

And she cried, Oh, I want to know.

An Apple in the Pie

I have become more of a short story writer and a poet than a novelist of late. I have been working on a collection of works that will, I think, someday appear in a book entitled An Apple in the Pie: A Study in Purpose. The work will be comprised of many of my older poems, the new ones, the final chapter of my beloved book, three short stories, and a few autobiographical narratives and personal essays. All of these explore, to some extent, the purpose of life at both the grand and microscopic scales--why we exist but also why we take certain actions. In the end, I suppose the conclusion is that the purpose is different for each of us, and that--but I'll let you draw your own conclusions.

An Apple in the Pie

Wander the graveyard of those souls who have learned to die

Whose forgotten carcasses have long since become ash:

Oh, it's just another apple in the pie.

There is the steelworker's song of when all goes awry

And life ends with a cacophony of clangs and a clash:

Wander the graveyard of those souls who have learned to die,

There is the tragedy of the war veteran's unheard cry

As he swallows too many pills from the hospital stash:

Oh, it's just another apple in the pie.

There is the Christian martyr's sorrowful goodbye

As she launches a bomb on a shopping cart with a dash:

Wander the graveyard of those souls who have learned to die,

There is the obsessive-compulsive divorcée's ceaseless caw of why

Since her husband left their life together with the rotting macaroni in the trash:

Oh, it's just another apple in the pie.

Pray to Providence that their sorry souls have ascended to the sky,

Store their stories in some overflowing memory cache,

Wander the graveyard of those souls who have learned to die:

Oh, it's just another apple in the pie.