Poem: HELENA TWILIGHT

HELENA TWILIGHT 

(informed by the short fiction 

of John W Campbell 

and Lester del Rey) 

i’m old now, yet see you then, eyes
splinters of sky, still, a rage inside
that alights for the one night we share,
my loving machine, blessed are
those beats that intrude but slightly,
blessed your touch that burns me, blessed
the poems that bleed, lies that breathe,
cells that shed, seeds that trade
in this passionate blackness,
air charged and urgent, Helena,
Helena Twilight, beside me…

chemicals choke my bloodflow, torn adrenalin
as your fingers grow white knives, your tongue
a stilting blade, the thread of hot needles
that skewer my eyes, killing me blind,
your terrifying love gifting me glimpse of
the world you come from, awaking now to
blood-glow horizon along severed retina
red sands blow as flame, spraying fire,
a burning world where senile
gravity slows, disconnecting in
stretched terrors of silence, not dream
not yet termination, but as real, no fern
no moth, no spores, no living cell,
no flesh in screaming shadow curves
of three moons – no, worlds once drawn close,
then entropy-sundered in leaking tides,
life long-broke and expired, emptiness only, &
the world’s final towers of self-spun machines
that drone for purpose, lonely for divine creators
a sickness virus-deep, a yearning loneliness
reaching across time…

i’m old now, and begin to understand,
Helena, Helena Twilight, my loving machine,
you wait a billion years ahead of me,
this slow travel through each day
only brings us closer, all I must do
is wait…


Published in:
‘OMEGA no.4’ (UK – April 2006)