4.3.15

Why I Write Science Fiction

Because what’s more satisfying

than turning your ex into a handsome and charming

but secretly mind-controlled enemy drone—

and then having the heroine

kill him off with a ray gun?  So much better

than saying, “After we broke up,

he moved to Tennessee.”  Tennessee could be

a whole planet, orbiting a dying star,

its populace jumping ship in fast little sportscars

of spacecraft, a macrocosm of one life,

minus the inertia throw by filing taxes

mowing lawns, washing dishes, fixing small

dull things with screwdrivers: the one dimensional

minutiae of being Earthbound. 

 A black hole

can spit you out anywhere, but we can’t handle

that kind of possibility.  It’s about escape:

it’s more appealing to deal with a snarling

man-eating bat-beast in a cave on Redok VII

using only a pocketknife

than to deal with

your mother

your dickhead boss

or your guilt about everything.

All that empty space up there begs

to be hieroglyphed, flawless as new snow,

waiting for stories to be slung on grappling hooks

for us in our futuristic silver jumpsuits to climb,

to do something better with it—

to fire a shot at the moon

and maybe,

actually hit it.